


Strange Orbits

by FridayIncarnate



Series: Synchronicity [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU: Multiverse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Darkside AU, Darkside Rey, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Enemies to Lovers, Half & half AU, Kylo and Rey role reversal, Lightside Ben Solo, Lightside au, M/M, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, peripheral Poe/Finn/Rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28641078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FridayIncarnate/pseuds/FridayIncarnate
Summary: To part-time grifter and failed Jedi Ben Solo, stealing the Starkiller plans is just another odd job for the Resistance. General Hux is determined to stop him, even if it means falling into enemy hands himself.The ensuing clash upends more than just Ben's long-repressed Force sensitivity. Another life whispers to them through cracks in reality, visions of a world where they are both enemies and allies.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Synchronicity [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098896
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	1. Sundown

The wide, red sun cannot rise quickly enough over this forgotten planet locked in its orbit.

General Hux narrows his eyes at the horizon. Not from brightness – the lack thereof. Even when the feeble star breaks clear of the low canyons and long-abandoned mines that splinter this nameless planet's surface, the best the sky can muster is a dim plum hue. Intelligence reports indicate that by midday it will warm to violet.

If it were up to Hux, the star known only by its designation Lambda-382 would not exist long enough to witness this color shift. He prefers to run tests of this nature as early in the morning as possible so he'll still have a full, productive day ahead of him. However, the nature of this test is such that it must be done at high noon local time.

He spends most of the morning running checks of the equipment. They're redundant, of course. His engineers have already done them several times, all according to protocol. It gives him something to do other than watch this planet's dim vermillion sun crawl its way to the peak of the sky. It's perhaps odd that a man who's spent his entire adult life in the void of space wouldn't seize the opportunity to appreciate a planetside sunrise, but Hux has never been a sentimental man and he doesn't intend to start now. It would be the height of futility to find beauty in a star he's about to obliterate.

Once he's personally reviewed the specs on the prototype energy-draining system to his satisfaction – twice – he switches to tests of the base's cloaking device. This is even more unnecessary. Everything is up to code, just as his briefing back on the Finalizer indicated. No sensor in the galaxy can detect the First Order's presence on this remote planet. That is, not until the inevitable blip in the cloaking device when the system powers on at 1200 hours. Nothing Hux or his subordinates can do will prevent that from happening.

Of course, by then it won't matter. Let the New Republic watch, if they like, as an insignificant red giant blips out of existence at his hands. Even in the incredibly unlikely event that they're watching this uninhabited corner of the galaxy, no one will miss system Lambda-382 or this dusty carbon husk orbiting it.

And the collection of petty troublemakers calling themselves the Resistance? They would have to already be in orbit around Lambda-382 to have any chance of reaching this base before the test concludes, with what Hux is certain will be satisfactory results.

He knows the power containment system in question will work flawlessly. He wrote the specifications himself. Frankly, this entire operation could have been delegated to the lieutenant at his side.

But Hux wants to see this for himself.

"Sir, the tech team is ready," his lieutenant says with a crisp salute.

"And the evacuation sequence?" he asks calmly. "Remember, once the last of this star is no more, the atmosphere will retain heat at a life-sustaining level for only six minutes."

The question is as good as rhetorical; Hux drilled them on it twice this morning. He even made himself last in the evacuation sequence. The risk of complications is infintesimal, and it will be good for morale.

"Everything is in place for a swift and smooth exit, sir."

"Excellent, lieutenant." Hux allows himself a smirk as he looks out the wide window. A vast red sun dominates the violet sky overhead. "On my command. Begin the activation sequence."

* * *

Above the abandoned mining colony of Lambda-382, the radio crackles inside a drifting X-wing. Ben Solo jars to attention in the cockpit. _Finally._ He flips the ignition, sitting up as the engines purr to life around him.

"Alright, guys, look alive," the familiar and cocky voice of Poe Dameron chatters over his commlink, the leader of this little squad of powered-down X-wings lurking in orbit. "I'm picking up an energy spike on the surface. Coordinates heading your way."

The coordinates pop up on Ben's control console just as his overlay highlights an unassuming stretch of the cracked, brown earth below. Poe didn't need to bother. By the time Ben's console has targeted the landing zone, a column of wispy red light streams from the sun to the planet's surface below.

Ben's comms crackle again with the rest of the squad's affirmations to Red Leader.

"Yep, I'm on it," Ben adds. He dips toward the atmosphere.

"Let's crash this party," Poe says. His X-wing glides along and noses ahead of Ben's, the other three pilots flagging behind them at a more sensible speed. "Intel says the First Order's not expecting company, so security should be light. _Should_ be. I'll sweep the northern edge of the landing zone for anti-aircraft cannons. Red 2, you take the south edge."

"Got it," Ben says. "Red 3, cover me."

"Take Red 4, too," Poe says. "Five, you're with me."

Ben scoffs. "Two? I don't need two. You take two."

"Not a chance, buddy. I'm not gonna be the one to break it to the general if you lose a single hair on that pretty-boy head of yours."

"This coming from you? Please, Dameron, I’m sure your squad has seen the way you preen." Despite his attempt at a good-natured tone, Ben can't keep a little annoyance from creeping in at the mention of his mother. Not everyone in the Resistance realizes Ben's relationship to General Organa, but Poe comes from Rebellion stock, too. "Ten credits say I beat you to the landing zone."

"Make it twenty and you're on," Poe says. He snaps back into his Red Leader voice. "But stay low! Doesn't count if you miss any targets."

"Hey, it’s me." Ben grins and slams the accelerator.

He relishes the rush in his stomach as the dusty ground hurtles closer. Flames embrace the hull. Ben goes vertical as he breaks the atmosphere, one eye on Poe's X-wing hurtling down with him in parallel. For a moment the years melt away and they’re just a pair of teenagers again, the wayward kids of Rebellion heroes fallen into the underbelly of their parents’ New Republic. For a moment he can forget that the enemy targets ahead belong to the First Order. He can pretend it’s Poe that’s joining him for old time’s sake and not the other way around. Nothing more important than a rival gang’s cache awaits them on the ground.

If Ben doesn’t pull up now he’ll be nothing but cinder. He breaks the nosedive.

"Six and a half meters." Ben reads off his altitude.

"Five point seven," Poe says, and Ben can hear his grin through the commlink. "Still got it."

"Save it for the stormtroopers," Ben says. Reality seeps back into his bones as he settles into the planet’s gravity. They’re not teenagers anymore, and this isn’t a spice run. Ben dips into a narrow ravine that gives him some cover.

A target pops up on his radar. Ben swerves around a break in the canyon, keeping low but not so low that his engines kick up a cloud of the loose, washed-out dust that coats the surface. Rusted mining equipment clings to the canyon walls ahead. Behind them looms the low but unmistakable silhouette of an anti-aircraft tower.

"Looks like they've got a welcome wagon after all," Ben announces into his comms. "Three and four, hang back and stay low in the canyon. Wait for my signal."

"Copy, Red Two," his wingmen say.

Ben tips his X-wing sideways and skirts as close to the canyon wall as he dares. The tower cannons could tear his ship apart in a single well-placed shot, but for now they're pointed skyward. Ben keeps his wings tight and races forward at high speed.

The end of the ravine looms. Ben breathes deep. He waits until he sees himself crashing in his mind's eye.

"Now! Cover me!"

He slams the brakes and opens his wings. Ben's droid shrieks as the X-wing pulls up from the canyon directly beside the anti-aircraft tower. The massive cannons are busy turning toward Ben's allies when he erupts from below and blazes a line of fire up the side of the tower. The whole tower twists and crumbles on melting girders. His direct hit on the turret is just icing on the cake.

"Tower down," Ben says, trying his best not to sound smug. Okay, maybe not his best, but there was an attempt.

"Not bad," Poe's reply comes over the radio. "Took one down up here, too. Radar's picking up another one. Stay sharp."

"I know," Ben says reflexively. He exhales his embarrassment, glad that he didn't turn comms on for that. Sometimes Poe's transmissions sound a little too close to the backseat piloting comments he used to hear from his dad.

A second blip comes up on Ben's radar. He closes his wings again and boosts, pulling into a low charge. This next tower perches on a high cliff. No convenient ravines to cover him on the approach this time.

"They'll know we're coming," Ben says to his wingmen. A few strategies flash half-formed through his mind, followed by twenty credits he doesn't have to spare. "Just... stay out of range."

Before his allies can copy, Ben turns his boosters to full throttle.

Enemy fire sears the air around him. Sheer speed carries him past the incoming shots. He's upon the tower in seconds. Ben fires, weaves around an incoming laser that flies right beneath his wings, fires again.

The tower explodes. Fiery debris from the tower sails so close to the cockpit that Ben ducks. His X-wing bucks from an impact along the tail end.

"No, no! Come on!" Ben shoves the dashboard, sparks flying past his ear. His readout shows moderate damage to one of the thrusters. His droid is offline.

The thrusters are barely functional enough guide him along to the rendezvous point. Poe's distinctive black and orange X-wing glides out from behind a cliff. Ben scowls. He redirects a power surge into the damaged thruster. It explodes a jet of fuel behind him, propelling his X-wing into a tumble. Ben turns it into a barrel roll and skids into place at the rendezvous point moments before Poe lands.

"You know you've gotta be alive to collect your twenty credits, right?" Poe vaults down to earth from his cockpit and collects BB-8. He glances up at the crackling and smoldering on Ben's X-wing. His eyes widen. "You fried the droid! Again? Damn, Solo. You gonna do that every time you drop in to help out?"

Ben sweeps a strand of smoldering hair out of his eyes and raises his pointer finger at Poe.

"Don't call me Solo." He hops down from the cockpit. The thin, cold air of this planet settles against his collarbone.

"My apologies. Benny boy it is." Poe draws his blaster and waves the other three members of their squad closer. "Okay, clock's ticking, guys. We're in and out as fast as we can, priority is grabbing those weapon plans intact."

Poe's eyes lock with Ben's as he adds a little extra weight to that last word. Ben's shoulders shrug reflexively. Poe is familiar with Ben's work, so there's no point pretending to be offended.

"Once that sun goes out, we got six minutes to get our asses back in our cockpits before they freeze off." Poe gestures at the pulsing red disc that fills the sky overhead. Already wisps of red are curling from the sun down toward a point on the ground to the northeast.

"Then let's make this quick." Ben cocks his pistol.

Together the squad runs ahead, Poe taking point. They duck around an outcropping of rock and follow a low canyon towards the objective coordinates. Ben keeps an eye on the sun overhead as he presses forward.

A thing that size... an entire sun... it shouldn't be possible. Not with circuits and levers, anyway. Snuffing out a star seems more like the power of the Force than a feat of mere technology. His mother's tales of how the Empire had wiped Alderaan off the star charts with a single shot was enough to chill young Ben's bones. This technology will be orders of magnitude more powerful if it succeeds. But the Ben Solo who shivered at those stories was only a child. Ben has uncovered new nightmares since then, even made a few of his own.

_No, not here._ He shuts that part of his mind away with a stout breath. Ben strides ahead, pistol ready.

Poe signals for the group to stop as he draws to the edge of a clearing. Ben takes a position on the other side of the opening, hidden in the rocky shadows. Poe has a better vantage point, but Ben can still glimpse the distinctive fin of a First Order command shuttle around the corner. The column of red light streaming down to earth behind it casts everything in an eerie glow. Even BB-8 remains silent, stirring up a tiny cloud of dust as it shuffles into place behind Poe.

"Six," Poe mouths silently. He holds up two fingers and gestures to the right, forward, then left.

Ben nods. Poe nods.

As one they round the corner. The rocky walls open up around them on a structure built into the canyon wall in brutalist imperial style. The command shuttle and a stormtrooper transport sit idle nearby. A pair of stormtroopers stands guard at the building to the left, stationed on either side of its sealed blast doors. Another pair guards the shuttle, and the last pair swings around to the right on what seems to be a perimeter check.

Ben fires to the right. His first shot sizzles through white armor and topples the stormtrooper.

"They're here!" A helmet-modulated voice shouts.

"The Resistance–" Another stormtrooper falls from Poe's blast before he can finish his thought.

Ben charges at the one remaining trooper to the right. His opponent's shot whizzes over Ben's shoulder. Ben slides into the cover of the stormtrooper transport and returns fire. It's Poe's shot that drops the stormtrooper.

"That's two," Poe says, throwing his back against the wall next to Ben. "Double or nothing?"

Ben does not have forty credits.

"You're on," he says.

A fresh volley of enemy fire dampens their shared grin. The blast doors whoosh open and release a dozen fresh stormtroopers onto the field. The low walls of their platform give them cover. One of the fresh troopers lands a direct hit on Red 4 – Ben curses under his breath. Jerikka, her name was Jerikka. Now she's a glassy-eyed heap in the dirt.

"You two – back to your ships, we need air support!" Poe shouts.

Their remaining two squadmates nod. One makes a grim face and fires a parting shot at the stormtroopers. Ben ducks out from behind the transport to lay down covering fire, exposing himself to an enemy shot that nearly fries the hair off his forearm. The next shot will take his hand clean off if he doesn't duck. He flinches back into cover. Red 5 hits the ground. What was his name, his real name? He's not moving.

Ben yells a wordless, animal sound and takes down the stormtrooper that felled Red 5. Return fire presses him back behind the transport again.

"Oh, hell no, they're not pinning us down here," Poe mutters, snapping a fresh power cartridge into his blaster.

"How many we got out there?" Ben says.

"Why don't you tell me, Force boy?" Poe shouts over the sound of incoming blaster fire. "Aren't you supposed to have magic powers or something?"

"The Force isn't magic, it's–" Ben makes it halfway out of cover before another shot drives him back. "It's complicated! And very powerful, and – look, I'm not messing around with that stuff ever again if I can help it!"

"Well, you got any other bright ideas? Cause we're running out of options!"

Ben glares.

Engines roar overhead as an X-wing slices through the sky. Fire rains down on the stormtroopers.

On impulse, Ben grabs a fallen stormtrooper's blaster and leaps around the corner of the trooper transport, firing with both blasters.

"We're doing this, okay, we're doing this!" Poe follows, firing wildly.

The stormtroopers are scattered, some firing wild blasts into the sky, others ducked on the ground. Ben charges with guns blazing. His pulse hammers in his ears, louder than the rain of blaster fire. He's so close now, the stormtroopers' line is already breaking as the X-wing twirls around for a second pass.

Heavy cannon fire blasts the X-wing out of the sky. It tumbles to the ground in a fireball that slices across Ben's path. Heat washes off of it in fierce waves.

"Damn it!" Ben stumbles back, staring up at a turret rising from the roof.

"Anti-aircraft guns on the command station," Poe grumbles. "That standard now?"

The wall of stormtroopers reforms and launches another sea of red lasers. Ben yanks Poe into the open door of the trooper transport. Behind the stormtroopers, a technician hustles toward the shuttle, arms laden with some kind of important-looking equipment.

"Don't let any of them reach that shuttle!" Poe fires out at the loading ramp. His frantic shots pepper the ground and scatter the troopers away from it.

"Poe! Look!" Ben points at the sky. An unnerving shade of deep indigo overtakes the sky as the last wisps of red light disappear into the ground.

"Shit," Poe mutters. "There's no time!"

"Go," Ben says. He shakes his head when Poe starts to argue. "If they get off the ground, it's over. Keep them from taking off so I can grab the plans."

"Yeah? How you planning on doing that, huh?" Poe fires another desperate round of shots at the on-ramp of the First Order shuttle. This time it's not enough to stop a trooper from guiding the technician up the ramp. Poe bites his lip in a grimace.

"There'll be more noncombatants inside, engineers. They can't hide in there forever," Ben says.

A blast of air stirs the dirt outside as an engine hums to life. Ben huffs under his breath at the sight of the shuttle's long wings unfurling, preparing to take off any moment now.

"Go!" Ben shouts again.

Poe slaps him on the shoulder. "Five minutes, Benny boy. Don't let me down."

Poe tumbles out of the transport, firing over his shoulder as he bolts back toward his parked X-wing. BB-8's rapid tumbling beside him churns up a dust cloud to cover them. A blast from the anti-aircraft cannon narrowly misses them as they dive behind a cliff. The cliff's edge and seals the narrow canyon behind Poe's heels.

Ben ducks back into the trooper transport. Well, looks like he's not making it back to that X-wing on foot, anyway. His gaze lands on a weapons rack built into the wall of the trooper transport.

Five minutes. He can work with that.

* * *

Hux fumes over the command console, his knuckles white under his gloves. The Resistance assault unfolding on the other side of the window is chaotic and feeble at best – he's counted no more than five combatants, half of whom he's watched fall – but nevertheless they are here. That in and of itself is enough of a problem, with or without loss of ground troops. It means there’s a leak on the Starkiller project.

"Sir, three minutes and fifteen seconds until the readings finish downloading!" The technician's hands tremble under Hux's gaze. An explosion outside draws his attention. Somehow the rebel scum on the ground has gotten his hands on some grenades.

Brilliant.

He'd had a plan. This evacuation had been scheduled down to the second, and that schedule hinged on the download time of these test results. Not the series of explosions and blaster shots eating away at the defensive line outside. The time it takes for the download to complete could be the time it takes that line to break.

Hux's jaw clenches. His evacuation plan had also scheduled him to be the last person to leave the base. Changing that now would reek of cowardice. If that news were to spread throughout the ranks before Starkiller even reached completion....

He elbows the technician aside and takes over the workstation, then keys in the sequence to eject the disc. An error pops up on the screen: he can't close the files on the still-running oscillator without ending the active download. Hux sweeps all of the other files onto the disc and ejects it.

"Permission to evacuate," Hux says, pressing the disc into the technician's hands. "Keep these blueprints out of Resistance hands at all costs."

"But– sir, without the active files–"

"That's an order!"

"Sir!" She scrambles for the blast doors and doesn't look back. A laser blast squeaks through the doors as they close behind her, harmlessly flying wide across the other side of the room. It makes a mess of what had once been the staff's water cooler.

Hux stands alone at the console, now; that was the last of them. He narrows his eyes at the scene unfolding beneath the dull purple sky, lit now only by blaster fire and the smoldering remains of a downed X-wing. He watches the technician escape onto the Upsilon-class command shuttle outside, though it brings him little relief. The odds of outright assassination are slim – for Hux, at least – despite the lone resistance fighter who seems to have released an entire arsenal on the last of the ground troops. The Resistance did not come for blood.

Another explosion rattles the ceiling and Hux's certainty along with it. A fresh X-wing appears over the battlefield. Hux spares it only a moment's glance, his attention drawn back inside by a smoldering ceiling tile raining down that threatens to scorch his boot.

He glances down at the timer on the console. One minute, forty three seconds.

Hux had really hoped he wouldn't have to do this. No choice, he consoles himself as he keys an SOS into his communicator, bound for the _Finalizer_ , half hoping that his co-commander doesn't answer it.

Of course she does. Instantly.

"Having trouble, General?"

The hologram of a black-robed woman stands on the console, a dark mask covering her face. Kyra Frey's visage is as striking for the look of her mask as how completely it conceals the face beneath. Thin silver lines slice in from her temples and down her nose to the point of her chin, leaving the impression of dagger-hewn cheekbones. Whether the face beneath it shares such harsh lines is anyone's guess. If Hux were any less familiar with her usual monotone, he might not notice its mocking edge now.

"Deploy a squadron of fighters to assist with extraction," Hux replies crisply, fighting a sneer of his own. "The Resistance is here."

"Supreme Leader won't be pleased to hear it," Frey says, her voice sharp and cold. "He demands the results of your little experiment."

"And I have them." Hux meets her eyes, or at least, the part of her mask that he's come to think of as where her eyes must be. Assuming she's even human, which is up for debate. "I need only evade capture long enough to ensure he gets them."

"Ensure that he does. We both know how much a captured general is worth to the Order."

Kyra Frey's image dissolves into nothing.

Hux does know. He has not taken issue with those sudden vacancies in the chain of command before, and he doubts his subordinates will now. Generals can be replaced. The Starkiller Base documents, on the other hand, are unique. Including these active files for the thermal oscillator that Hux was tragically unable to hand off to the technician.

He glances down at the console. The download is finally complete. The odds that this one man running around on foot could intercept a wireless transmission are next to nothing, especially with his attention distracted by a firefight. Slim, but not impossible. Hux hopes that Snoke and Frey will believe that as he sweeps the last files onto a disc.

He bolts for the blast doors and tells himself that this is a sensible security measure. Not at all seditious.

The sound of blasters has ceased outside. Out the command window, he glimpses the one remaining X-wing swerve to avoid a blast from the anti-aircraft gun. So that's still functional, at least. Hux waits until the X-wing turns its back to the blast doors. He inhales sharply and opens the doors, his blaster drawn and ready.

Stale, cold air greets him. Not a single stormtrooper is standing, but there's no sign of the rebel on foot either. The X-wing circles back around towards Hux's Upsilon-class command shuttle. Hux cringes – where is that squadron Frey supposedly dispatched? He pulls out his commlink and takes quick strides towards the ship.

"Prepare to launch. I want that shuttle in the air the moment my feet touch the ramp–"

Something cold and solid presses against the back of Hux's neck. His voice dies in his throat.

"Hands up. Drop the blaster." A low voice speaks behind him.

Hux does as he's told. The rebel kicks his dropped blaster out of reach.

"Where are the plans?" The deep-voiced rebel asks.

Hux purses his lips. His life depends on withholding that information.

"You have until three," the rebel says. "One."

Hux turns his head as much as he thinks he can get away with. Over his shoulder he catches a glimpse of disheveled dark hair framing a long face.

"Two."

He calculates as rapid a judgment as possible: this man is certainly a killer, but is he rash enough to risk a potentially valuable source of intel? His haircut says yes.

"I'm a general. More valuable to you alive than dead." Maybe if Hux speaks quickly enough, it will sound true. "They'll trade. The plans for my life."

"You expect me to believe that?" A grim chuckle resonates from behind him. The rebel shifts his grip, pressing the blaster to Hux's temple as he jerks Hux around to face him. "I know how the Order works. You're as disposable to them as that star was."

Hux wants to roll his eyes, snap out a retort about how the Resistance's noble stance on the sanctity of life must be a great consolation to the pile of dead stormtroopers on the left. Granted, Hux has signed off on plenty of orders that involved some loss of disposable personnel, though he prefers not to (it's inefficient). He channels his irritation into making his next point as sharply as possible.

"Then you know they'll follow my orders." Hux waves the commlink in his off-hand for emphasis.

"Have it your way... General." The rebel looks down at him. "Didn't know the Order kept its cowards so high up the chain. I guess it makes sense, though. Keeps you out of the line of fire, right? Just not this time."

He tugs on Hux's sleeve, his thumb grazing over the light grey stripes that mark Hux's rank. Hux meets the man's gaze with a steely glare. They're both shivering. Hux has lost track of his evacuation schedule, of how many seconds before the last life-sustaining heat leeches away from this planet's feeble atmosphere. Something else catches Hux's eye, above his captor's shoulder and beyond the X-wing that's keeping the command shuttle grounded: a black silhouette against the deep purple sky. Another, then another, in distant formation.

Hux's draws the communicator towards his mouth, gradually, as if to avoid making any sudden movements. His eyes are locked on the incoming squadron. He moves as slowly as he dares to with the frigid air knifing at his lungs.

The rebel's commlink crackles before Hux's does: "Look out! We've got company up here!"

It's worth the gamble just for the look of naked bewilderment on his captor's wrinkled brow. He spins to look up. Hux seizes the opening and slams an elbow into his solar plexus.

The rebel buckles over. Hux goes for the gun, but his opponent's grip on the weapon holds fast. The dark-haired man looks up, panting, the red light of blaster fire reflected in his glare.

The TIE fighters open fire overhead. A blast sears a hole in the wall just overhead. Another shot rocks the platform mere feet to Hux's left and throws the grappling pair to the ground. Hux kicks the enemy's blaster out of his hand and scrambles towards it.

A fierce grip closes on his ankle. He's alarmed at his opponent's strength as he's dragged easily back across the platform on his stomach, the blaster still out of reach. Hux catches a quick glimpse of the chaos overhead as the rebel flips him onto his back. The X-wing swerves, red lasers raining down around it on all sides from the incoming TIE fighters. A TIE fighter takes a hit and collapses into a fiery nothing. It doesn't matter, the odds are clear: there's no way these two rebels can take the command shuttle now. Even demanding the plans for Hux's life is futile now. They would never make it out of orbit alive.

The rebel knows it, too. Hux sees it in the lines of his brow, the grim set of his teeth.

Hux smirks.

Frigid steel presses under Hux's chin. The rebel stares down from the other end of his blaster with narrowed eyes. Any facade of bravery Hux has managed so far is utterly stripped away now.

"Order them to cease fire." The rebel's voice comes out in quiet white clouds.

Hux hesitates. Breathing is getting difficult, his own exhalations visible as tiny jagged wisps.

"Do it! Now!" He jerks the blaster to the side and blasts a hole in the ground beside Hux's right ear.

Hux scrambles for his commlink and complies. "This is General Hux. All TIE pilots cease fire immediately."

He's dimly aware of the rebel hauling him to his feet, dragging him across the fiery battlefield like a human shield, but the air is thin and cold and he moves through it in a daze. The stormtrooper transport swallows him up. His captor keeps Hux clutched against his chest until a pair of cuffs snaps tight on his wrists. Hux wants to laugh at that, spend his shallow breath on amusement that this rebel thinks he’s still cogent enough to pose a threat. It leaves him in a gasp when the arm supporting him lets go.

Hux hits the floor. Darkness takes him.


	2. Unenviable Imperatives

Ben slumps over the controls of a stolen stormtrooper transport, half-focused on the streaks of white light outside. They shift abruptly to pinpricks as he drops out of hyperspace.

His free hand kneads from one aching temple to the other. His head is still light from the subzero combat – he likely wouldn’t be conscious now if he hadn’t swiped an adrenaline shot from the troopers’ supply cache. Cold, fight, or drugs, none of them are helping the faint static sensation needling at his skin as the Force tries to press its way in. It’s persistent, he’ll give it that. But so is Ben. He presses back, equal and opposite, guards this sacred separation with measured breaths as he guides the transport into the rocky embrace of D'Qar's rings.

The deep green planet looms larger and larger until it swallows the viewport whole. An ache settles into Ben's chest that has nothing to do with the bruise forming over his solar plexus. It’s anyone’s guess whether Ben’s mother will be on base or away on mission, but with his safeguards against the Force already shaken Ben hopes he’ll miss her this time.

He follows Poe’s black X-Wing down into the atmosphere and focuses on the verdant jungle sprawl racing beneath him. Together they duck into a gap in the treeline, an honest Resistance ship and a stolen First Order one. The transport is a clumsy brick of a ship. Ben grumbles at it shudders to ground beside a grass-topped bunker.

The Resistance base lies quiet, or as quiet as it ever seems to get. A beige tunic darts from bunker to bunker every so often, no less hurried than ever, there are just fewer people scattered across the base’s paved plaza than he's ever seen here before. No hiding it – this is a skeleton crew. Even droids are scarce. Granted, the handful of times Ben has been here were all before some major operation, some time when the fledgling Resistance needed to scrape the bottom of the barrel to scrounge up whatever last-resort kind of help they could get their grubby little hands on.

Like Ben.

He purses his lips and sighs out through his nose. _Nope. Not going there, not today._ Ben raps a fist on the control panel like the thought is a dashboard trinket he can leave behind.

At least this time he's brought an offering.

Ben steps back into the hold of his stolen tin can. His unconscious prisoner slumps against a chrome wall pockmarked by blaster fire. Safety buckles cut a haphazard criss-cross over the crisp black lines of his officer’s uniform, the best restraints Ben was able to manage in his cold-addled haze. At least the equipment locker on this thing had some cuffs for his hands. A single crunchy strand of hair sticks out from the otherwise impeccable red swoop over his forehead. Ben waves a hand in front of the prisoner's face. Nothing. He ruffles his hand through the slick gel and turns order into chaos. The general's head lolls in blissful ignorance.

 _The_ _g_ _eneral._ Ben's smirk falters. He’s been using that title based on this man’s word alone, and Ben Solo is not some rookie nerf-herder that takes the First Order at its word, uniform or no. _Especially_ not the ones in uniform.

He dips a finger beneath the man's starched black collar and withdraws a thin chain. Flat metal dog tags dangle there:

GENERAL A. HUX  
HC-0107  
O NEGATIVE  
NO RELIGIOUS PREF

Ben's eyebrows pop up. So he was telling the truth. Okay, General. _Sir._ Ben snorts a quiet laugh to himself. He takes the tags for Intelligence and continues a check for concealed weapons. His search turns out to be a short one: he confiscated the commlink before liftoff, the blaster got left behind on that planet, and the only things in his pockets are a pack of cigarettes, lighter, and a small data disc.

Ben turns the disc over in his hand and frowns down at the general. It has to be the superweapon plans. So this sneaky bastard had them all along? Ben huffs and pockets the disc. He takes the cigs and lighter, too. Looks like he's nabbed a boring standard-issue First Order officer. It shouldn't surprise him – they probably just crank them out in a factory somewhere. Still, Ben had higher hopes for General Hux after that sucker punch. His disappointment falters as his hand brushes something solid tucked inside the general's sleeve: a wristband concealing a hidden chrome blade.

"Ooh, General. You are a piece of work, aren't you."

Ben's thumb glides along the flat edge like silk. The blade is pristine. He wonders if it remains unused or if the evidence has been scrubbed away into immaculate oblivion. The faintest swipe along the cutting edge draws a thin line of blood. He hisses. Damn. This has to be the sharpest blade he’s ever seen. Is that monomolecular? Definitely not standard issue. Ben would love nothing more than to keep it to himself. Tragically, he needs the credits. He retracts the blade and carefully slips the attached housing off the general’s wrist.

Satisfied with his findings, Ben unstraps his prisoner and moves to sling him over one shoulder. General Hux tumbles forward like a rag doll. Ben catches him by the shoulders moments before Hux’s forehead collides with Ben’s nose. He takes a moment to steady himself. The ruthless general of the First Order is almost unrecognizable without the scowl that twisted his features during their battle. He looks peaceful like this, lips faintly parted and messy hair dangling in front of his eyes.

His eyes. Ben catches himself noticing them, because… because they could open any moment now. And it would be bad if the enemy caught sight of any Resistance secrets around the base. Right. Ben shifts his grip on the general, sliding one arm under Hux's knees and the other below his shoulders. He should have a view of the enemy’s face while he carries him. For tactical reasons. Hux's head slumps against Ben's shoulder, strands of ginger hair tickling his neck.

Ben arrives at the shuttle door with his arms full. He kicks the release button.

"Benny boy." Poe stands outside, his dark hair tousled and his helmet tucked under the arm of his bright orange flightsuit. He slaps Ben hard on the shoulder. The movement jostles the unconscious general, but Poe seems not to be concerned. "Glad you made it out of there okay. You owe me forty credits."

Ben is only half-listening as he squints into the bright grey sky. Grassy hills line this rare clearing in the lush jungle that covers D’Qar. That natural cover makes it an ideal location for a Resistance base, though Ben has never loved the damp weight of the air, the way it clings to him. It’s too much like the insistent press of the Force. He scans the paved landing zone for signs of his mother. The silent hum at the back of his head goes still once he’s sure of her absence, for now. If she’s here, it will be below the surface, where the majority of the subterranean base is hidden. He lets his mind return to the present moment. Then it catches up with Poe’s outrageous claim.

" _Me_ owe _you?_ You're out of your mind!" Ben scowls.

Poe is already descending the steps into a grown-over bunker. A powerful, chittering flash of orange hurtles past Ben's calves as BB-8 nearly topples him in pursuit of Poe.

Ben ducks into the dim opening as quickly as he can manage while weighted down with Hux. The guy is a thin streak of a man, but either he's heavier than he looks or Ben's been slacking on his workouts, and, well, he's not about to admit that to _Poe_.

"Those forty credits are mine." Ben jogs to catch up. "Did you see how many stormtroopers I took out?"

"Yeah, yeah, you got the ground game, I'll give you that, but did _you_ see how many fighters I took out?"

"Oh, you mean before I negotiated us a ceasefire? Or did you forget that I saved your ass, Dameron?" Ben blocks Poe's path in between two antique workstations. He takes advantage of his height to heft the general up into Poe’s line of vision, brandishing Hux as a reminder of his contribution.

Poe wrinkles his nose at the prisoner. "Ceasefire or no ceasefire, I still took out half those fighters."

"You could've taken _all_ of them and it wouldn't make a difference! I took out more troopers than there were fighters in that whole squadron."

Poe opens his mouth and immediately closes it again. He casts a frustrated glance at the half-disassembled body of an A-Wing blocking his path around Ben. BB-8 beeps at his heels, head swiveling back and forth between them.

"Fighters count double," Poe says at last. He shoulders past Ben and into a low hallway receding further into the dark earth.

"Like hell they do! They didn't count double on Gornak Beta!” He nearly hits his head on a tangle of roots as he follows Poe deeper into the base. There are many others like it, scraggly organic curves dangling from the geometric lines of the ceiling overhead. Even in the bunker the jungle makes its presence known.

"That's because you fudged the body count, don't think I didn't notice the banthashit you pulled with that _very convenient_ explosion–"

Poe stops at a rust-kissed bronze door. He smacks the release button and glowers over his shoulder.

"Gentlemen?" A bemused woman's voice calls from inside.

Ben’s voice dies as the door opens. He knows this tall underground chamber, remembers the way sunlight filters down from the skylights and paints its overgrown walls in warm golden hues on brighter days. Today the dim overhead light tapers out in greyscale shadows halfway to the floor, leaving the hanging lamps to do most of the work. It gives the room a sense of scale and emptiness that would better suit some long-abandoned temple. A faint blue glow spills from the round holotable stationed in the middle of the Resistance command center, casting the room’s sole occupant in cool light.

"Officer Connix," Poe says.

The tightness in Ben’s chest relaxes. Officer Connix smiles across the table at the two of them. The Resistance uniform that hangs loose over her lithe frame pulls tight across her shoulders as she leans over a console. A strand of blonde hair strays from one of the buns drawn high on either side of her head.

“Hey, Connix,” Ben says. “Command left you to run the place yourself, huh?”

“For the moment. General Organa is still away on a diplomatic mission. It’s good to see you both made it back.” The cheerful crinkles around her eyes vanish as her gaze falls on the man Ben is carrying. “That’s the prisoner?"

"Uh... yeah." Ben shuffles forward. He offers up his cargo to Connix. "Here."

"We need to get him to a secure location right away." Connix pushes off the console and folds her arms. She glances at Poe. "There's a maintenance closet off the mess hall that's mostly out of use. The door locks, so."

"You mean the door jams," Poe says.

"We’ll make do." Connix speaks with a confidence at odds with her frown. "Solo, you know the one?"

"Yeah, sure." Ben doesn't, but his arms are getting tired.

"Once you've secured him, make sure to sweep the room for anything he could use as a weapon," Connix says.

"Well, yeah, of course."

"And make sure no one’s going to go rummaging around in there! Leave a note on the door," Connix calls after him. "Actually–"

"No one's gonna read that," Poe adds his voice as Connix finishes saying the same thing. Ben shrugs.

"Just block the whole thing off," Connix finishes.

Ben nods and makes his way back through a maze of dimly lit tunnels to the mess hall. It takes a few tries to find the door that doesn't budge when he kicks it and then a few more tries to force it open.

The storage closet is no more than two meters square. A busted steam heater lies neglected in the back corner. Like everything else on the base, this room has been around since the Rebellion days, and it shows. Ben hauls his prisoner inside and uncuffs one hand to latch him to the pipes by the defunct heater. He turns to sweep the room for potential weapons.

At least Connix was right that it's mostly out of use: the shelves off to one side are lined with sparse piles of flight helmets, bundled uniforms, and tool belts. A few miscellaneous supplies peek out from a stack of repurposed crates, things like replacement lights, power cells, comms headsets, bed sheets, and standard-issue toiletries. Ben shoves the box of headsets outside the door – giving the general radio access doesn’t seem like the brightest idea – then does a quick check of a pile of tool belts. Most of the tools are for small-scale maintenance work, precision tools like screwdrivers built for impossibly tiny screws. They're pointy in only the most technical sense of the term. It would take a truly creative mind to do any real damage with these. Or maybe just a vindictive one. Ben recalls General Hux’s hidden dagger and kicks the tool belts out of the closet, too.

There. The improvised holding cell looks secure enough, unless Hux is planning to weaponize the plunger in the corner. Ben would like to see him try.

This errand has taken long enough. The door grinds shut behind him as Ben belatedly notices an note tacked to the front: “DOOR JAMS.” _Helpful._ Ben flips it over to scrawl a hasty warning: “DO NOT OPEN. IMPERIAL BASTARD INSIDE.” He slides a nearby garbage bin in front of the door for good measure.

Poe and Connix are frowning over the holotable when Ben returns.

"–taking losses like this. We're stretched thin as it is," Connix is saying. One hand covers her forehead.

"Exactly," Poe says in a low voice. "Which is why we need every pilot we can get–"

He stops. Silence stretches between Ben and the two Resistance regulars, making the long cavern feel even larger. It's not the first time he's walked in on this conversation. Secondhand embarrassment heats his collar at another mention of how desperately the Resistance needs more people. He avoids Poe's gaze, knowing exactly the look he'll find if he meets it. Despite all their bickering, Poe is the closest thing to a real friend he has in this den of misfits and wannabe heroes—maybe anywhere. That’s what makes it so hard when Poe gives him that look like he could belong here. Poe doesn't know the finer details of how Ben’s Jedi training ended, his failure as complete as it was horrific.

Leia knows. She might humor him with these occasional requests for assistance, but it doesn't escape Ben's notice that she has never once asked him to join her Resistance full-time.

The Resistance always needs people. It has never needed Ben.

"I left him in the closet." Ben’s words fall flat. He carries on regardless. "So. We good here?"

"We still need to debrief." Connix turns her attention to her console. "For the mission report, I've put down losses of three pilots and four X-wings, including flight droids."

"Yeah." Poe exhales heavily.

"As for enemy losses, Poe says you had a better vantage point for the ground battle." Connix looks up at Ben. "Do you have an estimate?"

"Uh, yeah, I took out 12 of 'em," Ben says. "Plus whatever Poe got."

"Six. Plus four TIE fighters," Poe adds, raising his chin.

"Plus the general," Ben adds. An enemy general should definitely count for at _least_ two points, but Connix's somber expression persuades him to save this argument for later. "And look what he had on him. Bet you ten credits I've got your blueprints right here."

He tosses Connix the disc he found in Hux's pocket.

"Good work, Solo," she says. Ben flinches at the name but keeps his mouth shut. Connix slots the disc into a secondary console. "I'll run a scan on this so we can get it to engineering ASAP. There is one last—"

A high-pitched chime stops Connix mid-thought. Her eyebrows crinkle together as she looks back down at the console.

"That's strange, it shouldn't have scanned so fast." She waves her hand across the controls. The chime sounds again. The crease in her brows deepens as she inspects the console. "Is this it?"

"What do you mean, is this it?" Ben feels a note of tension creeping into his voice.

"This data. Is this the only disc he had on him?"

"Yeah. Why.”

"There are only a few files on here." Connix waves a hand at the screen. "We can't know for sure if something's hidden until Intelligence takes a look, but all I'm seeing here is some scanner readings and a few pages of blueprints. Nowhere near enough files for an entire battle station. Just one component... the one associated with the scanner readings, it looks like. An oscillator."

Ben’s lips tighten into a line. He doesn't know quite what to say to that.

"Well." Poe clears his throat. "Sounds like somebody owes Officer Connix ten credits."

Ben directs his mounting frustration at Poe with a dark glance. He would love nothing more than to fire off a worthy riposte, but all he can do right now is deflate.

"Forget the credits.” Connix offers a weak smile, her eyes a weary brown. "But that does mean it's even more important we get every bit of intelligence you have on the prisoner."

"I don't know anything more about him than what's on here." Ben tosses her the general’s dog tags. "And that he has a mean sucker punch." And a pretty sweet knife, but Command doesn't need to know that. Ben's hoping for a little more than a finder's fee, thanks.

"Maybe so," Connix says, "but in a situation like this we would usually rely on an Intelligence officer to debrief you and take over the prisoner situation. The problem with that is, our Intelligence corps is all off-planet right now."

"That's a real shame," Ben says. He doesn't like the way Connix’s expression hardens.

"In lieu of an Intelligence officer, that duty passes to the first available member of High Command," Connix says. “And they're all off-planet on mission, too."

"Of course they are," Ben mutters. “So?”

"So until I can reach one of them to debrief you by holocall, we need you on base to keep the prisoner secure.”

“You _what?_ No. Who knows how long that’ll take? I have things to do.”

“It could be five minutes,” Connix says. “Or significantly longer. Any one of them might be too occupied with their mission and to take a call. Worst case scenario, General Organa is expected back by the end of the week."

"Week?" Ben scoffs, panic rising. He’s not going to explain to his mother how he failed the primary mission objective. Again. "Oh, sure, that's fine. Great. And the contracts I have lined up for the rest of the week, what am I supposed to do about those? You ever try rescheduling on a Venkorian spice lord? I don't _have_ a week."

"The Resistance," Poe cuts in, raising his voice, "does not operate on your schedule, Solo!"

"Well I don't know what to tell you!" Ben snaps. "I'm rancor food if I'm not out of here tomorrow. Call or no call!"

"No!" Poe shoots back. "No, you are not about to disappear in the middle of a situation that _you_ got us into just because you don’t want to take a kriffing call from your mother!"

Fury bubbles up from deep in Ben's chest and splinters his headache. Suddenly he's on his feet, watching himself move like it’s someone else’s body advancing on Poe. Ben’s hand rises toward Poe's face. The air ripples.

 _No no no no no, not this, not_ _here_

Time stretches to a halt as Ben becomes one with the space around him. Every motion resonates within him. Not just the dance of every particle in orbit around him, not just each breath that fills Poe's lungs or each pulse that floods Connix's heart, but every thought, every feeling. Anger radiates from the center of their system in miniature. Ben feels it: Poe’s frustration, Connix’s stress, they flow into him and weave together until they are no longer Poe’s or Connix’s or Ben’s but all of it simply _is_. Everything and everywhere, an unmistakable power screaming and clawing at his aching temples. The Force.

_Good. Good. Claim your power, boy._

Images flash past him. Poe's head lolls at an uncanny angle. Connix lies still on the floor, her eyes unfocused.

_Ben! No!_

Green light floods Ben's vision. He blinks it away and all at once he remembers himself, remembers the urgency of keeping his defenses up. He slams his eyes shut and pours everything he has into repelling the rush of power bearing down on his barrier. Slowly, with a long, heavy breath, Ben expels the Force from his body.

He opens his eyes.

Ben finds himself leaning over Poe. He’s thrust his pointer finger into Poe's face, but Poe and Connix are otherwise unaccosted. Poe glares up at him, his chin held high in defiance. Raw power crackles in the air, imperceptible to the others, making the hairs on Ben's arms stand on end. Tamed, for the moment, but always there. Always.

He wheels away from Poe, breathing heavily.

"I'm taking a walk. Find me when High Command calls."

He stalks out of the room before either of them can speak. The door slams shut behind him. Ben dimly registers it echoing down the hallway after him.

A grey drizzle greets him on the surface. Gentle droplets wash down over the rolling hills, raising a thin mist that softens the horizon. It reaches out to Ben and coaxes him into a soothing static.

He can’t linger here.

Ben is a powder keg and he knows it. Only a fool would welcome that into their sanctuary. Ben's uncle had been that fool once and it had cost him everything. His mother is not sentimental enough to reenact that mistake. As much as the shame burns him, this unspoken agreement between them is correct. Ben should not stay on the base any longer than necessary. His presence is a greater threat than even this enemy general he’s brought to their doorstep.

Soft curves ripple out from his boots when he steps in a puddle at the edge of the walkway. General Hux will wake up before long. A single slip-up is all it would take to unleash one of the most highly ranked members of the First Order into the heart of the Resistance. Someone needs to take responsibility for that, and by all rights it should be Ben. He frowns down at his wavering reflection. Which is more dangerous, an unstable Force user or an unattended enemy general? He doesn’t want to find out.

He doesn’t want to find out what his Venkorian contact will have to say about rescheduling, either.

“Damn it!” Ben kicks over an air traffic cone. A passing utility droid beeps and doubles its pace.

Ben runs a hand through his damp hair, releasing a long exhale. He needs to get off D’Qar sooner rather than later. Two days, _maybe_ three if he really wants to push his luck. He can give High Command that long. And if they don’t get back to him by then… well, he’ll figure that out when he gets there. No need to panic now. He takes a quick glance around the landing zone to make sure no one is looking before he rights the air traffic cone and ducks back into the bunker.

Stepping back into the base proper sends a shiver through him, or maybe that’s just the chill of the air hitting his rainy skin. It’s just the air. Ben shakes off the bad feeling hanging over him. He can hold it together for a few days. And if he’s going to wait around for a holocall anyway, it’s no skin off his back to keep an eye on the guy he hauled in here. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even be able to get some intel out of him to make up for his slip-up with the blueprints.

This is fine. It’s fine! Ben’s had close calls with the Force before. All he has to do is keep his cool— _avoid any emotionally compromising situations_ , as his uncle might have said. With his mother and her omnipresent veil of Force energy safely off-planet, Ben doubts that anyone else on base will pose a problem. He settles back into his usual swagger and descends, following the dim tunnels back toward the imprisoned enemy general.

* * *

Kyra Frey's fists curl at her sides. She focuses on steady, even breaths, willing her mind to still the maelstrom of thoughts that has been churning since General Hux’s command shuttle returned without him. She doesn’t indulge in satisfaction that his failure has proven her correct. She doesn’t stoop to indignation at the disruption of Supreme Leader Snoke’s plans. Most of all she doesn’t dare to imagine that he might reevaluate those plans. Instead Kyra grounds herself in the darkness that surrounds her: the cavernous walls and the still, black air that dwarfs her between them, the ever-present call of the Dark Side.

She gazes up. The towering projection of Supreme Leader Snoke fills the room.

"The personnel from General Hux's weapon test returned with incomplete data," Kyra says. "They say the missing files are with the general himself, who has fallen into Resistance hands."

“So the general has been captured.” Snoke takes the news with a calm, nearly imperceptible twitch of his withered lips.

“Indeed.” Frey refrains from further comment.

"I sense your frustration, my apprentice." A faint chuckle unfurls in the darkness. Snoke pauses with a look of consideration on his face. "What's more, doubt. Arrogance. Shame, too, at your failure to hide it, hm?"

Kyra stares back, unblinking behind her mask. Snoke will sense it if she falters. He’ll reward her reluctance with more of that disconcerting laughter. The thought settles cold and hollow in her stomach.

"Speak plainly." Snoke leans back on his throne.

"I do not understand why you place such faith in the First Order and its weak-willed lackeys," she replies, "my lord."

Something else about it bothers her, too, though she’s wary of telling Snoke so. The red-headed general who too often joins her for these holocalls has thus far taken every possible opportunity to elevate himself in the Supreme Leader's estimation, at Kyra’s expense when he can manage it. Occasionally she condescends to return his smug glances with a glare that even he is able to sense through her mask, but despite Snoke's insinuations to the contrary she does not see Hux as a threat. It's amusing, if anything, that one of the Order's interchangeable uniforms thinks he could challenge Snoke's own apprentice for his approval. Snoke's willingness to indulge him in this delusion is distinctly less amusing.

That such a man would allow his underlings to save themselves while he fell into enemy hands, well, it strains the bounds of Kyra Frey's rather capable imagination.

"The First Order instills a firm sense of duty in its crew, the officer corps in particular," Snoke’s image drawls as though he’s bored by such a tedious task as explaining this. "It makes for a convenient instrument to achieve our ends, for now. As for General Hux's actions in Lambda-382, do not concern yourself. I doubt he would surrender except as a final option. He is a proud man. Easily replaced, should he fail to rematerialize."

"And what of the incomplete data? If that should fail to rematerialize?"

Kyra’s voice cuts through the air with an edge she knows better than to reveal to Snoke. It’s out before she can stop it, subtle but unmistakably present, her clipped diction like the hiss of a lightsaber igniting. The silence that follows is suffocating. She swallows and takes a shaky breath. Kyra doesn’t dare look away from Snoke even as she braces herself for his displeasure. He regards her with a cool, unblinking gaze.

"Ah." Snoke removes his hand from under his chin and leans forward, his immaterial face looming over Kyra. "Your doubt is not limited to the general, I see. No... I sense grave dissatisfaction with the Order, itself. That, and... fear."

"I've mastered my fear, Supreme Leader. You'll find I will not waver."

"Do not contradict me, girl," Snoke chides. He peers down with a lofty, knowing look in his eyes. "Yes... you fear our alliance with the Order, what it has to offer. The Starkiller project."

Kyra bites the inside of her cheek before she can be caught contradicting him again. Snoke's eyebrows rise, as if to indicate that he heard the unvoiced thought. His silence seeps into every crevice of the room and demands an explanation.

"I fear..." Kyra hears the bitterness in her own voice, nearly a growl, and pauses to compose herself. "I fear Starkiller’s promise will cost us more than it helps. Destroying the Republic will deprive us of a valuable tool. One that we could bend to our will no less effectively than the Order, which might deal an even greater blow to the Resistance."

Snoke nods as if considering this argument. He's not. Kyra feels it in the Force, as palpable as a sudden drop in temperature.

"Is that all Starkiller will deprive you of, my apprentice?"

His words sound soft and cut hard. Her mind turns, inexorably, to the clouded gravity well that festers at her core. As powerful as Snoke’s training has made her with the Force, not once has Kyra Frey sensed what she’s really looking for. She could sense what any given stormtrooper on this ship had for breakfast without lifting a finger, yet no matter how far she reaches or how hard she concentrates, still her parents elude her. They should be closer to her than anyone else in the galaxy, but they abadoned her when she was too young to even remember their faces. Each time she tries she senses only a tangle of rage and static. Her family might have escaped the hellscape of Jakku all those years ago. Or they might be one desert outpost away from where they left her. They might already be long dead. Or they might have escaped to the New Republic only to be snatched away in a blaze of red armageddon, her bounty taken by another's hand, and even then Kyra fears that snare of hateful energy might keep her senses muddled as though nothing has changed.

"You are not yet ready," Snoke whispers. "Soon. The time draws near, but you must prepare yourself. Trust always in my teachings, in the Dark Side. We must remove our enemies in the Light to unlock your full potential. The First Order will bring us to the Resistance, and General Organa will bring us to our greatest enemy."

"Skywalker," Kyra says.

"Yes," Snoke confirms. "Organa won't be able to resist searching for her brother. And when we find him, we must be ready. You must. But Project Starkiller will continue as planned, with or without General Hux. I leave it to you to determine which is more expedient."

"Yes, Supreme Leader."

"Go," Snoke says.

Kyra bows her head. Her cape swishes behind her as she turns to the exit.

She senses a tremble in the hallway directly outside the door. When it slides open, a skinny dark-haired officer hunches to the side of the door. His eyes bulge when she steps across the threshold.

"Lady Frey.” He stands at attention as she passes, hesitating a moment before he hurries to keep up with Kyra's brisk strides.

"Report," she orders. She's seen this one before. His uniform indicates a lower rank than Hux. Lieutenant Mitaka, a quick sweep of his mind reminds her. He had half a protein bar and cold caf for breakfast. He barely made it to his shift on time and has been riding the edge of panic ever since, evident from the high-pitched buzz that greets her mind where it brushes against his. Kyra grits her teeth, pulling back.

"The scouting party we deployed in the Lambda-382 system – ah, former Lambda-382 system – they've just completed their sweep," Mitaka says.

"And?"

"No signs of further Resistance activity in the area." His voice quivers. "Or any further information on General Hux's location."

Kyra comes to a stop on the bridge. Beneath the black velvet curtain of space, a massive planet cuts a white arc across the viewport. The outlines of Starkiller Base mar its snowy surface. From this distance, the weapon looks complete already. Most of it, in fact, is—a petty part of Kyra resents that she remembers even this much from her co-commander’s excessively frequent and dull update meetings, but until the Lambda-382 debacle, Starkiller was scheduled to be operational by the end of the week. This power containment test was to be the last hurdle before Hux gave the go-ahead to complete construction on the real thing, which she supposes must be why he insisted on overseeing it himself. The arrogant ass.

"And the missing blueprints?" Kyra asks, her gaze still locked on the planet below. "The engineering team returned without casualties. Surely it's within their capabilities to recreate the components that the general so _carelessly_ omitted."

"But – the general, he – it’s not that simple," Mitaka says. Kyra snaps around and stares. "I mean, uh, it seems that... uh, one of the engineers, she said that General Hux himself oversaw that part of the design.”

Kyra doesn’t doubt it. “Explain why I should care. Quickly.”

“I… because—” He swallows, shrinking back from Kyra’s proximity as much as possible without breaking his regulation posture. “By her estimate, it would take the team several weeks to redesign it from scratch and run the appropriate tests. Longer, without his insight."

Kyra turns back to the viewport. She resists the spike of hope prickling at the back of her mind, counting breaths to avoid forming any hint of deviance from the Supreme Leader's plan. How long might a fruitless search for the general push back Starkiller's completion date? And might it not, feasibly, be disrespectful to order the engineering team to start on that project before the search team had given up on finding their leader? _A waste of resources_ , her counterpart might sneer, _a poor impact on morale…._ Her lips twitch beneath her mask. How many days might Kyra buy to untangle the snarl in the Force that obscures her from her parents?

It would have been too easy for Snoke to simply order Kyra to recover Hux; no, this is a test. Snoke knows it will tempt her. That is the point.

Failure before the Supreme Leader is not an option.

"Put our spy networks on high alert for Resistance activity," Kyra says, her mouth twisting into an unseen scowl. "I want those blueprints. The general, as well, if he’s alive. And make sure Captain Phasma's team is battle-ready at any moment. The Resistance's next move will come soon, I sense it."

“Yes, Lady Frey.” The lieutenant salutes. His bootsteps click a hasty retreat.

Kyra lingers at the viewport, indifferent to the thick weave of anxious energy that settles into the Force among the bridge staff whenever she is present. Her irritation is not theirs to claim, her resentment reserved for an inanimate opponent that has nevertheless bested her. For the moment. She stares down at the technological juggernaut that might yet steal what the Dark Side has promised her. This is the general’s twisted progeny: a glorified snowball. The sight of it sickens her. Kyra flicks her long cape aside and stalks away from the bridge, feeling the eyes of the First Order’s finest on her back all the way to her meditation chamber. She settles onto the floor with crossed legs and turns her mind’s eye inward.

The snarl, as ever, is there. It calls to her, beckoning out of one corner of its mouth as it mocks her from the other. It attracts and repels, ensnares and eludes, at once inevitable and impossible. Rage flares in Kyra’s chest as she swathes herself in Darkness. Her mind turns to her enemies to strengthen it.

If Skywalker’s death is the key to mastering the Force, she’ll kill him with her own two hands.

* * *

Everything aches when Hux comes back to himself. He grimaces. Dim, vague outlines of disorderly piles are cramped around him in this too-small room. The only light creeps in from between the closed door and its ill-fitting frame. Hux inventories his newly acquired aches and pains while he waits for his eyes to adjust: his back, slouched against a cold steel wall; his left wrist, a handcuff digging into his skin; his arm and shoulder, strained to reach the pipe where the other cuff is secured; his right calf, bruised from the scuffle on Lambda-382; his head, pounding with the worst stress headache he's had in months—which is saying something, given the kind of hours he's been putting in on the Starkiller project.

His pride, stuffed like an afterthought into what is increasingly apparent is a supply closet. Not even a well-stocked one.

Hux sucks in a slow breath through his nose. He gives himself a count of three to indulge the fantasy that, in fact, he did not survive the weapons test on Lambda-382. He died an officer's death, a First Order exemplar to the last. Despite appearances, he never suffered the indignity of capture, least of all by an enemy faction so woefully under-resourced that they lack the proper holding facilities for a prisoner of his station. General Hux is dead, and this is his hell.

Three.

Hux exhales the petty imagining. His gaze sweeps his surroundings as he clicks into evaluation mode, headache be damned. Loose red strands impede his vision. Hux brushes them back into place with an irritated huff, though they don't stay as well as they should. The seal of his hair gel must have broken sometime during the flight. His captor must be a truly abysmal pilot.

Little in his immediate surroundings proves useful. He gleans nothing from the shabby uniforms on the shelf but a smug sense of superiority. If the supplies laid out in this closet truly represent the resources at the Resistance's disposal, well, Hux could say that the First Order has already won. His nascent smirk falters. Of course, if he commanded a guerrilla force such as the Resistance, he might intentionally lead the enemy to believe that his forces were less well-equipped than they were in reality. Hux shakes the thought. He's seen the scrappy little rag-tag squad they sent on a mission as important as his own capture. There's no reason to believe that the Resistance is playing four-dimensional Dejarik.

A jug of cleaning solution catches his attention on the lowest shelf. Reckless of his captors to leave such toxic chemicals within reach of a potentially valuable enemy informant, but ultimately unimportant. Hux intends to survive this ordeal.

Metal groans against metal. Hux’s gaze darts to the door. It rattles in its frame, grating at his nerves even as his adrenaline spikes. One muffled grunt later, it lurches open.

He squints into the sudden onslaught of light. A hulking shadow fills the doorway, though from his position on the ground Hux supposes anyone would look hulking. Weak fluorescent lights flicker to life overhead as the door scrapes shut again. In moments he’s identified the familiar lines of dark brows and a long nose. Hux purses his lips. The rebel from Lambda-382 slouches against the door, looking altogether too relaxed as he looks down at Hux.

"Comfortable?" A slanted grin crosses the rebel's face. His dark hair looks even wilder than it did during their fistfight, hanging in damp waves on either side of his face.

 _What do you think?_ Hux wrinkles his nose in contempt, but he keeps his mouth shut. It's going to take more than a little sass to break him. Hux knows how to take a beating; he thinks with grim satisfaction that this is perhaps the one thing he can thank his late father for.

The man who proved such an annoyance on Lambda-382 seems unbothered by Hux's silence. He’s still wearing the same plain olive tunic he wore during their first encounter, so either it’s the same day or this man is a disgusting slob with no sense of personal hygiene. Hux decides to reserve judgment on the passage of time.

"I see you’re still in one piece,” he continues. “Hope you didn't miss me. I had things to do, people to see. TIE fighters to blow up. You know how it is."

Hux does not dignify that with a response, aside from the most withering stare that he can muster. He flatters himself to think that he can muster quite a bit.

"You know, I wasn’t sure I believed you were really a general until I checked your tags. But you were telling the truth, huh. _The_ General Hux really flew out to some middle of nowhere system to run a weapons test himself. I thought that was odd. I mean, sure, we expect a man of your rank to be ruthless, but a micromanager, too? Just doesn’t seem like the most efficient use of human resources."

Hux’s jaw tightens. It _wasn’t_ efficient, and therefore unlike him. Frey had said the same thing. He hadn’t offered her an explanation—he doesn’t need to explain anything to her, they are equals—but he’s almost tempted to explain it to this rebel, if only because the truth will chill him: Hux wanted to watch that star blink out of existence with his own two eyes. He flicks his tongue over his dry lips and presses them firmly closed.

“But, hey, that’s just me. Management’s not really my scene. I guess that’s why you’re a general and I’m not.” The annoyance leans down to crouch at Hux's level. He's still wearing that insufferable smirk as his gaze slides from head to toe and back again, stopping to rest only when his eyes lock with Hux’s. "They feeding you enough over there, General? You're smaller than I expected."

"Are you going to ask any questions?" Hux snaps. He curses himself for breaking his promise to remain silent.

“I thought I just did.”

“I meant _real_ questions.”

This infuriating man shrugs. "Maybe."

Hux narrows his eyes. There's something highly irregular and distinctly un-military about this operative, if that's even what he is. Hux counts the beats of the pause that stretches between them, every few moments of silence punctuated by the light flickering overhead. Hux is familiar with staredowns as an intimidation technique, but this rebel's stare lacks malice. There's a softness around his eyes, an easy openness in his face that Hux doesn't trust for an instant. His wide lips remain quirked as if he’s going for the galactic endurance record in smirking. Hux wonders if this rebel plans to irritate him into submission.

Finally, he moves. Hux's jaw tightens as the rebel reaches up to the shelf overhead. He braces himself for whatever rudimentary and barbaric tools the Resistance supplies its inquisitors.

"Thought you might like a drink." The rebel sets a glass of clear liquid on the ground next to Hux.

Hux warily shifts his gaze from his opponent to the glass. It's within easy reach of his free hand. He bites back a dry swallow as he tries and fails not to imagine the taste of cool, fresh water.

"How stupid do you think I am?" Hux says.

His mouth widens into a grin that makes Hux miss the smirk. "You sure you want me to answer that, Hux?"

"That’s _General_ Hux to you."

"I know it is, Hux." The annoyance leans back and sits against the door, bracing his hands behind his head. "Well, you don't look as stupid as you did when we brought you in. You fixed your hair, at least."

"You could stand to fix yours," Hux snaps, clenching his free hand before it can fly reflexively to his fringe. "That would never stand in the First Order. We'd have it chopped right off first thing."

"Yeah, well, this might come as a shock, but this ain’t the First Order." His lower lip twitches as he runs a hand through his scraggly mess of hair. Hux counts that as a victory.

"Obviously not. So you'll excuse me if I'm reluctant to accept a drink from you."

"Come now, General, you're going to hurt my feelings. If I really wanted to kill you, don't you think I would have done it by now?"

His voice has no right to be so soft or nonchalant as it imparts promises of murder. Yet his next simple action peels the doubt away from Hux's mind as sharply as if he had ripped off a bandage: he lifts the glass to his lips and takes a long drink. He stares Hux in the eye as he swallows. The man is being honest, at least about this. And Hux is terribly thirsty.

He offers the glass.

Hux takes a cautious sip. Water trickles into his mouth, neither cool nor fresh, but it soothes his parched throat. The stale, egg-like taste brings back memories of a planetside mission early in his career when he'd made the mistake of drinking from the troopers' groundwater supply.

"You're welcome," the rebel says.

"Your hospitality is severely lacking." Hux struggles to suppress a grimace as he takes another sip. "Prisoners of war have rights, you know. Meals, bathroom breaks, something that resembles a bed at least? It's as if your pitiful organization has never housed a prisoner before."

"Yeah, you got me." He shrugs. "Well, I don't know about the rest of them, but you're right. I've never kept a hostage before. Guess that makes you my first."

"What an honor." Hux's voice drips with disdain. "So you're new, is that it? Didn't the Resistance have any competent intelligence officers on hand, or have we killed them all?"

"I said the same thing." His mirthless chuckle gives Hux pause—but surely this is just part of his good cop act. "But I can see right through you. Don't bother trying to get information out of me. I'm not Intelligence."

Hux snorts. "That much I can tell."

"Careful, General." He leans in until his face is only a breath away. "Don't forget who's in charge here."

Hux tenses at the rebel's sudden proximity. His arms brace the wall on either side of Hux's head, his body radiating quiet heat into the space between them. Hux doesn't need those broad shoulders boxing him in to remind him that this man has already overpowered him in a brawl. Their tangle on that dying planet was more than enough to remember his opponent's strength: the fierce grip of his hands, how easily he pinned Hux to the ground. The battle they wage now is no longer physical, and Hux's gaze shifts from his opponent's musculature to his face. His eyes swim with intensity, brown and smoky like backlit liquor in the kind of shady cantina Hux has only ever deigned to see in holofilms. The light taste of rain hangs in the air about his face.

Hux refuses to be cowed. He glares back and raises his chin in a gesture of defiance. Those fluid eyes widen slightly, their dark gaze flitting down and back up again. The momentary lapse breaks his hold, replaces intensity with uncertainty. Enough for Hux to allow himself a smile and sit back. Petty, perhaps, but they both know he's won. The rebel leans away and scoffs.

"You're plucky, I'll give you that," he says. "But you wouldn't bother trying to get information out of me if you didn't think you're getting back to the Order. Well, maybe I can help with that. I'll even give you a ride. All I need are the coordinates for your base."

Hux sighs through his nose. _There it is._ The small talk is over. The real questioning will begin any moment, along with everything that entails. He tries to calm himself by imagining he is comfortably back on the _Finalizer_ , free of irritating Resistance lack-of-Intelligence officers or whoever this absurd man thinks he is. Perhaps their situation is reversed and his captor is the one bound for questioning. The polished silver walls and proper lighting of his ship are a welcome comfort to his mind. Even the First Order's interrogation suites are more comfortable than this damnable closet.

Well. Until the equipment comes out. Hux swallows a grim, thin-lipped smile. It won't be long until this rebel catches up to that part of the process, green or not. The green ones are always the worst. They've not yet learned finesse, and too many try to compensate with enthusiasm.

"You can't blame me for trying." The rebel shrugs, his voice drawn into a low, carefree drawl of indifference. He perks up suddenly and adds, "You know, it's funny. We took a look at that disc you had on you when I captured you."

Hux stares firmly at the ceiling.

"It was incomplete. Not enough files for a whole battle station, or even the whole power supply system. Just some test results and the component being tested... an oscillator." His face looms nearby, tugging at the edge of Hux’s vision like a magnet. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, General?"

Hux watches the light overhead and counts how often it stutters. His interrogator's presence lingers, a twitch in the corner of his eye and the faint scent of rainwater.

"I just thought that was pretty sloppy," he continues. "For an organization that values order as much as the First... well, you know."

Hux's contempt reaches a critical mass. His eyes snap to meet the rebel’s, who returns Hux’s glare with a mischeivous twinkle.

"There you are," he says, and damn it all, he's enjoying this, toying with Hux like a sarlacc draws out its dinners. His face is so close, now. Close enough that Hux could easily headbutt him, or spit in his face, or lean forward and take a bite out of that prominent nose. It would only lead to more suffering in the long run. Hux considers whether he might well be petty enough to risk it. His gaze darts down to those smug, full lips.

A metallic scrape seizes his attention. The door flies open.

"Oh! Why, there is young master Ben! I do hope I'm not interrupting anything–"

Hux blinks up into the light. A golden humanoid droid stands in the doorway wearing a permanently wide-eyed expression.

"Fuck! Yes, Threepio, you are!" His interrogator leaps up and raises his voice. Ben, it called him. Hux files this information away: an ordinary name to match this unusual face. "Don't sneak up like—how did you get that door open so fast?"

"There is a bit of a trick to it. I'm happy to show it to–"

"No! Not now!” He shoots Hux a glare that seems to escape the droid’s notice. Ben grabs the droid’s arm and directs it back out the door. “Just come back later. Whatever it is, I'll deal with it then."

"Oh, my! Well! But I'm afraid your presence is required rather urgently," says the droid. "General Organa is on the holo and she requested your presence specifically."

Hux perks up at that. Ben, on the other hand, seems to deflate at the mention of the Resistance general. _Interesting._

"Of course she did. Did you tell her I'm in the middle of something?"

Hux purses his lips. If one of _his_ subordinates responded to a summons in that manner, he'd send them straight to reconditioning.

"I'm afraid she says it cannot wait,” the droid says. “I believe it has something to do with master Luke."

" _What?_ "

Ben's eyes fly wide open in what could be disbelief or fear. Hux has to smile a little at his reaction, but it's bitter and short-lived. The odds that this droid is referring to Luke Skywalker are too high to dismiss. Hux has heard that name in too many holocalls with Supreme Leader Snoke. Any advantage the Resistance gains from Skywalker could work against Kyra Frey and drive Snoke to lean more heavily on Hux's technological approach – or he might be cast aside even more readily so his enigmatic leader can pursue this mystical obsession. Hux doesn't get it and doesn't care to.

He didn't expect his adversary's glower to reflect those feelings back at him.

"You. General," Ben says, still visibly rattled even as his face works to smooth over his dissatisfaction. "We'll finish this later. Don't go anywhere."

He points fiercely in Hux’s direction and walks off, seemingly too distracted to even enjoy this last barb. The droid shuffles out after him and when the door slides shut, Hux is left alone again. The prospect doesn't comfort him as much as he expected. He lacks the tools for a proper escape attempt, even with this pathetic excuse for a prison. The quiet settles in. His questioner was irritating, true, but any chance Hux had at gathering information just walked out the door along with him. This Ben is hardly Hux’s idea of good company, but neither is he boring.

Hux dismisses the thought as the garbage that it is and discards his hopelessness along with it. He's survived worse than this, after all. He is not some middling lieutenant who's easily outclassed by the first upstart to come at him with an itchy trigger finger and a bit of luck. He is General Hux, commander of Starkiller Base and the youngest general ever to claw his way up through the ranks of the First Order with such ruthless efficiency. He scrutinizes his surroundings again.

The next time that door opens, Hux will be ready.


	3. Resonant Breath

Ben's bootsteps echo through the subterranean tunnels. He doesn’t care how loud. Barely anyone is on base to hear him, anyway. The soundwaves rattle through charged air, breaking against the tenuous barrier between himself and the omnipresent Force. On a good day, Ben is barely conscious of it.

This is not a good day.

It’s not enough that Ben failed to bring home the primary mission objective, now he has to look his mother in the eye and explain himself. The imprisoned General Hux is the only card left in his hand. Ben had hoped to get some useful intel out of him before this call, but C-3PO’s interruption has seen to it that he failed at that, too.

He pauses outside the command center.

The Force thrums against Ben’s temples, anticipation slithering cold on his skin. He won’t feel his mother’s Force presence like he would in person, but even speaking with her by holocall can shake his resolve. Ben steels himself, fortifying the oppositional energy that keeps him sealed away from all of that.

He slams the door release.

The darkened cavern looks much as it did when he last entered: empty except for Officer Connix, her brows wrinkled as she studies the round holotable, but this time the source of flickering blue light is none other than Ben's mother.

Even scaled-down and in holographic form, General Leia Organa's presence commands any room. She wears the posture of royalty and the fatigues of Resistance infantry, the battle-weary frown lines of a veteran and a glimmer of hope in her eyes that defies her years. Contradictions that would shatter a lesser person settle comfortably around her. Her presence radiates balance in more than just the Force, but yes, that too shines in this woman who so comfortably contains multitudes. Each role is visible in the lines of her face when she sees fit to show them: the princess, the rebel, the senator, the general.

The mother is hidden better than most, but Ben always sees her whether he wants to or not. Her gaze flits up as he storms across the threshold.

Ben's defenses shudder. The chill, damp air presses in around him from all sides, his lungs tightening as he holds himself firm against it. Such a small thing, the meeting of eyes. A miniscule droplet in the flood of power that is the Force. He should be used to that by now, has come to expect it, but still it nearly breaks the dam. Every time.

Ben doubles his efforts to rebuff it. His voice comes clipped and heated.

"What."

"Good to see you, too, Ben." Leia's lips give a half-hearted quirk. She turns back to Connix: "We'll talk logistics later. Leave us the room."

"Of course. General," Connix nods in deference. Ben waits until he hears the door shut behind her.

"I hope this is important. I was in the middle of something," he adds, trying his best not to sound _so surly,_ as his mother puts it.

“So I hear. We'll get to that." She levels a stern look that carves decades off of Ben. "First things first. We've just picked up some critical intelligence. It's the best lead we've ever had to get to Luke."

Ben's stomach churns. A memory flashes before him green and unbidden: his uncle's grizzled face staring down at him, eyes wide with horror. The gentle pressure of the Force surges against him like an ocean current swallowing him whole, and adrenaline surges from within him to meet it.

Ben worries at his lower lip. Leia watches in patient silence, clearly expecting a response.

"My uncle disappeared for a reason," Ben says. He’s careful to keep his voice neutral.

"And I'm bringing him back for a reason." Leia’s mouth marks a grim, determined line that doesn't match the softness in her eyes. "A lot has changed since then, Ben. We need him. He'll see that, I know he will."

"How can you be so sure?" Ben folds his arms. "He's as closed off from the Force as I am. Unless that's changed, too?"

"No." Leia’s volume dips, but her voice retains its intensity. "I haven't sensed him. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s sealed himself away. I believe he'll help us once we find him, and we’ve finally got word from someone who can. You remember Lor San Tekka?"

"That old monk?"

Ben remembers him, alright. The old man used to stop by Luke's school to pore over rare old texts for days at a time. He dressed like a Jedi but wasn't one. He'd always been kind to Ben as a child, pretending not to notice when Ben got up to mischief that would earn a rebuke from Uncle Luke. But Lor San Tekka had been kind to everyone at Luke's school. He wouldn’t be so happy to see Ben now.

"That's the one," Leia says. "He’s been looking for the first Jedi temple. Our intelligence says he found it. If Luke is anywhere, he's there. I need you to retrieve a map from Lor San Tekka. This is crucial, Ben. You’re our best hope."

Ben squirms, hope and fear at war in his chest. Isn’t this exactly what he’s been waiting to hear? A dark tendril unfurls in the back of his mind, whispering, _That's exactly why you can't trust it._ The relentless tide of the Force slips into the cracks in his shell and starts to pry.

Jedi business is the last thing Ben needs right now. He needs to be back on some janky Outer Rim station running shallow jobs for shallow people. The kind that keep him out of his head.

"Send someone else," he says. "Lor San Tekka doesn't want to see me."

The crease in her brow deepens. "Ben, if there’s anyone in the galaxy who can understand what you and your uncle have been through—”

"There's not. Okay?" Ben's patience snaps. His frustration seethes out through his teeth, gritted against the effort of keeping the Force at bay. "The only one who understands is Luke, and he left. He left _because_ he understands it. You're right, you can't trust this mission to just anyone. It _ca_ _n't_ be me. I won't do it. And for what it's worth? The whole thing’s a kriffing waste of time. Go ahead and chase him across the galaxy if you want, but nothing you can do will change the fact that he chose to leave. He's gone, Mom."

The last word slips out before Ben can stop it. A corrective "General" would just make it worse. He steadies himself, pressing his weight into his heels and exhaling slowly.

Leia's gaze sharpens, a flash of tempered steel. It morphs into the only thing Ben can think of that's worse: pity.

"And what about you, Obi-Wan Solo? Is your choice to leave, too?"

It takes everything Ben has not to cringe. He hates when she calls him by his full name, not just for the sound of it but for how neatly it represents his failure. Ben won't look away, though, not now that they're no longer just talking about Luke.

"I'm not gonna disappear," Ben says. _I'm not him._ "This is just business. I'm an independent contractor. I finished one job and I'm declining the next offer. That’s all."

"And it’s well within your rights to do so,” Leia says. “Except that you didn't finish your last job.”

"Excuse me?"

"You made the mission a whole lot more complicated from what I hear. I read Officer Connix's report. The primary mission objective was to retrieve the _complete_ schematics for the First Order superweapon. You did not. Not only that, you unilaterally decided to take a hostage without orders from Captain Dameron to do so."

"You're serious?" Ben’s frustration rises to a simmer. "Look, sure it wasn't on the mission objectives, but I got you a hostage who ought to be loaded with intel, at no small risk to myself, I might add! This is a general of the First Order we're talking about. I practically gave him to you gift-wrapped. So, you know, you're welcome."

"I don't remember thanking you." The creases framing Leia’s mouth deepen. "The capture I'll grant you. We’ll find a use for him one way or another. I'm a little less than thrilled that you brought a high-ranking enemy officer straight to Resistance headquarters."

Heat creeps up the back of Ben's neck. "Well, what else was I supposed to do with him? Bring him along to Venkor on my next job?"

"No, you're supposed to—Venkor? You're running jobs in the Venkor system?" The mother’s concern shines through a crack in the general's armor. She sighs. "Nevermind, I don't want to know. Look, Ben, you may not be official Resistance but you've been to base before. Did it ever occur to you that there's a reason we don't have holding cells there?"

"Budget shortfall?" Ben deadpans. If she’s going to scold him, he’s not going to make it easy.

"Don't get cute with me," Leia snaps. "We keep our holding facilities on isolated space stations. Because if a high-security prisoner were to escape and take control of a single station, the damage they could do would be limited to the Resistance cell that unit belongs to."

"Ah." Ben clears his throat. "That makes sense."

"So you see our problem."

"I don't, actually. Not really." Ben shrugs. "Your team will be back on base in, what, a few days? Just assign someone to security until you get back. Someone to watch the door, bring meals or whatever, maybe stick their head in and make sure he's not building a tiny Death Star in there or something."

"That's exactly what I had in mind."

Leia’s lips quirk up at the corners. The smile doesn’t quite make it to her eyes, steeled with determination and fixed firmly on Ben.

"Oh, no. No,” Ben says. “I didn't mean _me_. Look, I have things to do. There has to be someone else you can assign to this."

“I could give this to Poe, but then I'd need someone to fly the Lor San Tekka mission and we’d be right back where we started. I'm guessing you won’t reconsider your stance on _that_ assignment?"

"No, but—"

"Then guard duty it is. You're familiar with security contracts."

"Yeah, but—" Usually these gigs have him guarding some kind of highly illicit cargo, not a walking, talking officer of a hostile military force. That's not even Ben’s most pressing objection.

"Then consider this just another job. I'm extending your contract. Your compensation will be transferred when this situation gets resolved.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You’ll get the going rate for security contracts, per day. Duration is until a high-enough ranked member of Resistance leadership returns to base to formally assume custody of your prisoner."

"Let me guess," Ben says. "High enough rank is general."

"In this case, yes it is. You can see why it would be a bad idea to hold a First Order prisoner that outranks all the Resistance personnel on base."

Ben wonders why he can't have a normal mother who just asks when she wants him to visit more often.

“I hate to break it to you, but having me around isn’t gonna fix that problem,” Ben says. “I say this whole thing is a bad idea.”

"No argument here." Leia’s eyebrows pop. "You made this bed, Ben. Now lay in it. He's in your custody until I… until a ranking member of High Command returns. You do not leave his side."

"Looks like I don’t have much choice." Ben chews his lip. His mother did not rise to the top of two insurgent military forces and the galactic senate through a lack of cunning.

“I’m surprised you’re not more eager to take on this job, since you already took it upon yourself to question him.”

“I thought I could get something out of him about the missing weapon plans.” Ben hates the way his voice comes out like an admission.

“Did you?”

"No."

Leia nods, more to herself than to Ben, her features free from the faintest trace of surprise. That stings.

“Don’t bother with any further questioning,” she says. "In fact, the less you say, the better. Let him get nervous. Normally I wouldn't even want anyone but a trained intelligence officer to so much as spit at him."

“So, no spitting. Got it.”

“Only as necessary.” A smirk flits across Leia’s face. It mellows in the pause that follows, her gaze lingering on Ben. He catches one edge of his mouth inching towards a smile.

“Will that be all, General?” Ben pulls his mouth back into a frown.

"One last thing," she says. “I’ll need to speak with Poe, go send him in. And, Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“Have a little faith in your uncle… and in yourself. May the Force be with you."

Ben gives his table-sized mother an abrupt nod. He leaves her flickering and blue. His walk back to the door feels somehow longer than when he entered, his footsteps muted in the dim chamber.

He finds Poe outside in the hallway, crouched beside the door to scritch at BB-8’s round metal belly. Poe rises. His warm, dark eyes follow, and when they meet Ben’s the smile drops off of Poe’s face.

“She’s all yours.” Ben waves him into the chamber.

Poe’s eyebrows furrow, a question on his lips. He leaves it unspoken, frowning over his shoulder as the door closes.

The long corridor goes quiet. Ben leans against the wall and stares up at the ceiling, his eyes drawn to the rust-worn patches where eager roots have poked through. They squiggle through empty space, hungry for nutrients they won’t find in this malnourished rebel base.

A shrill warble breaks his reverie. BB-8 bumps his leg and looks up with one dark eye.

“Don’t worry about it, Beeb.” Ben pats the droid’s domed head. “I’ve got it all under control.”

The little droid beeps softly. In spite of himself, Ben lets out a little chuckle.

“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.”

* * *

Thick, ashen plumes swirl around Kyra, spiraling out and back in on themselves like a vast, incorporeal ouroborous. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and sinks deeper into the Dark Side of the Force, matches her pulse to the undulations of this tempestuous energy. It swells within her, surges up and out and in every direction at once, a hurricane barely contained by the thin film of her skin.

Frey swallows it down. Not a single drop can be allowed to escape. The one drop that slips past her ironclad shell might contain the answers she seeks. She concentrates, singling out one of the stormcloud streaks, racing alongside it as it folds and twists. Maybe if she follows the serpent to its source she can find its head, find her answers, stop it from devouring itself before it’s too late.

The light that filters through the stormclouds is deep, red, sanguine.

Faint awareness prickles at her consciousness like a breath on the back of the neck. It is neither as subtle nor as powerful as Snoke’s presence in the Force. He can choose to tread through her mind without leaving so much as a ripple in his wake or cast every atom of it in shadow. This is something far less powerful, something clumsy and mundane.

Kyra’s mind surfaces from the depths. She senses the anxious coil of energy approaching her door outside. Her mask slides on easily over her irritated expression.

Kyra reaches the door before her visitor does. He jumps when it slides open, his hand halfway to the comms panel, and jerks back into an abrupt salute.

“Lady Frey!” It’s the same watery-eyed uniform who addressed her on the bridge. Mitaka.

“Lieutenant. Report.”

“Yes, sir. Right away. We’ve received intelligence on a former associate of Luke Skywalker.”

“Skywalker?” Kyra’s voice sharpens. A shiver runs through her, stormcloud static lingering in her energy. “Tell me everything. Now.”

Mitaka shrinks behind his datapad.

“Y-yes, sir. His name is Lor San Tekka. He’s a religious figure of some kind, not a Force user but he has ties to the Jedi, including a history with Skywalker. He may have information pointing to Skywalker’s current location. We have reason to believe the Resistance will attempt a rendezvous with him soon.”

“Excellent,” Kyra says. “Where?”

“Our intelligence has tracked him to Jakku.”

Kyra stands dead still. Lethal energy courses through her. She is a breath of petrichor before lightning scours a gash from earth to sky, a bowstring drawn to the edge of breaking before the kill, because of all the planets stretched across this wretched expanse of a galaxy, this sniveling worm of an officer cannot possibly have named _th_ _at_ one.

“Jakku?” The word unfurls from her vocoder like a clawed thing.

“Yes,” he says with a glance at his datapad, “it’s an isolated desert-biome planet on the far side of—”

Mitaka’s voice snags on an aborted shriek, his feet scrambling at thin air as a bodiless power snatches him by the neck. Kyra is motionless except for the fists at her sides. Her fingernails dig into the inside of her leather gloves.

For a moment she waits, as if indifferent to the man squirming and sputtering before her. The hallway has emptied out, silent in either direction, calm but for this glaring exception. Slowly, when his reddened cheeks have begun to purple, she raises one hand and flicks her fingers downward. Mitaka drops, his feet collapsing under him as they touch the floor.

Kyra’s hand lowers to her side. She tilts her masked gaze down and watches his coughing fit give way to labored heaving. The vocoder twists her voice into the quiet warning of a rattlesnake.

“I know Jakku.”

Mitaka’s tablet rises and hovers above him. It shudders, an intricate web of cracks spreading over the screen, and the whole form crumples. Sparks fizzle against Mitaka’s sweat-drenched forehead.

“This little slab is worth nothing. The whole of the First Order combined could not begin to know that planet the way that I. Know. Jakku.”

Kyra jerks her hand to the side. What’s left of Mitaka’s tablet skitters down the hallway, trailing a thin line of smoke as it tumbles along the polished black floor.

“Understand?”

Between gasping, unsteady breaths, Mitaka nods.

“I asked you a question, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.” His voice is hoarse and barely audible.

Kneeling and quivering before her, his cap thrown halfway across the hall, this pathetic specimen is meant to represent the organization that Snoke has put his faith in? Mitaka’s shaky gaze turns upward, his eyes glassy and blown wide with terror. It knifes a cold line through her gut.

 _Pity,_ Snoke has warned her, _is but one slippery step from compassion, and that way lies the weakness of the Light._

“Get up,” she snaps, as disgusted with the creature at her feet as she is with her impulse to extend a hand to him.

“Yes, sir.” He scrambles up and stands at a shaken facsimile of attention.

“Find Phasma. Tell her she’s needed on the bridge. Immediately.” Kyra puts enough heat into the last word to send Mitaka running.

She doesn’t wait to see him go, her own feet carrying her in brisk and heavy strides to the bridge.

Silence falls the moment she sets foot on the bridge. Kyra keeps her shaky breathing quiet. She refuses to let any of these uniforms hear the faintest hint of instability make it past her vocoder.

Her shoulders hunch as she glares down through the transparisteel at Starkiller Base. It figures that her next objective would bring her to the one planet in the galaxy that she hates more than this one. Is this, too, part of Snoke’s test, or just a sadistic twist of fate, an eddy in the onward flow of the Force? By the time a pair of crisp bootsteps echoes to a halt behind her, Kyra has withdrawn the crackling storm of energy back inside, coiled within her where it belongs.

It isn’t long. Phasma knows better than to keep her waiting.

“At your command, Lady Frey.” A cool voice speaks through a vocoder.

Kyra faces its source. Outfitted in chrome from boots to helmet, Captain Phasma stands a head taller than Kyra, a fact that always subconsciously presses the Force-wielder to straighten her posture. Despite the instinctive shift, Kyra looks up to meet Phasma’s helmeted gaze with ease. The captain is direct with Kyra and content to maintain her current role in this machine—unlike General Hux and his ceaseless manipulations—traits which serve her well in her working relationship with both her co-commanders. More than once Phasma has been the fulcrum between Kyra and Hux’s clashing perspectives.

Kyra sometimes wonders if she would think as well of Phasma if she didn’t have Hux to compare her to. Kyra and Phasma are opposites in nearly every way, from the superficial height differences to their respectively hot and cold manners. Even Phasma’s polished armor deflects the light while Kyra’s black swathes of cloth absorb it and extinguish every trace. But they work well together, and that’s what matters.

“Captain,” Kyra greets her. “Prepare your troops. I’ve received word of a possible Resistance asset on Jakku.” The word passes her lips with an unmistakable edge of disgust, but if Phasma notices she doesn’t say so. “Intelligence says they’ll attempt a rendezvous soon. I want a batallion on the ground and another two on standby.”

“Right away, sir. And the size of the enemy force?”

“Unknown,” Kyra says. “I suspect they’ll try for stealth, but after the general’s embarrassing failure in Lambda-382 we should be prepared for anything.”

A brief pause passes between them. “Agreed.”

Kyra tilts her head to the side, unable to resist reaching out with the Force to skim Phasma’s emotional state. Phasma has always remained neutral when Kyra has let slip such petty jabs at her co-commander before, and Kyra appreciates that about her, because she knows that Phasma does the same when Hux lets slip even pettier ones. Any concern that Kyra has gone too far this time evaporates when she brushes up against Phasma’s mind and senses only mild, detached amusement. Phasma’s mind is too sharp for Kyra to dig deeper without alerting her to the incursion, so Kyra withdraws back into herself.

“Good. Prepare and crew a command shuttle as well. The Upsilon,” Kyra adds. “We depart in one hour.”

“You’ll be joining us planetside?” Phasma’s voice remains as dispassionate as ever. Her visor tilts, reflecting the sharp lines of Kyra’s mask back at her.

“This mission is of personal interest to me.”

Kyra bites her lip. That admission is too much—she would never have even tolerated the question from someone else. Still, it’s too close to admitting the power that hell-forsaken planet has to twist her into knots.

Kyra amends, “This Resistance asset may require my direct attention in a matter that concerns Supreme Leader Snoke.”

“Of course, sir. Shall I assemble an honor guard?”

“That won’t be necessary.” Kyra huffs at the suggestion, almost a laugh before it hits the vocoder and comes out the other side flat with scorn. “Dismissed.”

Phasma salutes and disappears in a beat of clipped, efficient steps. Kyra watches her go, mind wandering until the crimson swish of her cape vanishes around the corner and leaves Kyra alone with her thoughts. She’s startled to find herself facing the viewport again.

In her mind’s eye she can already see the sand-blasted dustball floating in the black sea below her. Her stomach curdles. The Resurgent-class Star Destroyer under her boots right now is not so far removed from the Imperial-era wreck she once frequented, scraping to find something—anything—useful in the harsh deserts of Jakku. As if there were anything useful anywhere on the whole bloody planet.

Her nails dig into the seams of her gloves. Those memories feel like a lifetime ago, and yet the mere thought of them is enough to tug at the frayed edges of this power she’s fought so hard to control under Snoke’s tutelage. It threatens to make the whole thing unravel.

Perhaps it’s no accident that this is where her chase has led her. Kyra turns over the possibilities in her mind, daring to return to the thought that her family remains in that cursed sandball’s orbit. If not them, at least Jakku will bring her Lor San Tekka, and from there, Skywalker.

Then the power she needs will be in her grasp.

* * *

By Hux’s third inventory of the supply closet-turned-containment cell, his prospects of a jailbreak are beginning to look bleak.

He leans against the heating unit, his cuffs scraping against its ventilation pipe. While both old and out of use, it admirably withstood his efforts to dismantle and repurpose it. Pity. A carefully twisted nail or scrap of metal could dispense with these cuffs. It might even allow him to rig a modest explosive from the power cells shelved beside him. Shelves which lean askew on plasteel struts, their style recognizable galaxy-wide as the cheapest of yesteryear’s economy-model furnishings.

Hux glowers at the tacky shelves and their equally thrifty contents. By depriving him of anything remotely useful to work with, the Resistance’s lack of resources has, perversely, become their asset. He is in no mood to appreciate the irony of the situation. Maybe if he had a bloody cig.

Given the resources at hand, the point in Resistance defenses that Hux is best equipped to break is Ben.

Not in combat, of course. Hux is scrappy, but he won’t delude himself when he’s already been defeated once. No, he must devise a way past Ben with his wits. The man is volatile, undisciplined, and in some way that Hux has yet to fully ascertain, at odds with Resistance leadership. He would very much like to learn why. A task which should prove simple, given the unkempt rebel’s infatuation with the sound of his own voice.

Which is why it so confounds Hux to find Ben’s manner transformed upon his next visit.

“Ah, if it isn’t my favorite member of the Resistance,” Hux sneers at the backlit shadow in the doorway. “Have you thought of any more irrelevant questions?”

He went through countless possible opening gambits, this one precisely calibrated to needle Ben into a display of swagger that will set the stage for a useful slip of the tongue. Hux channels contempt and challenge into his gaze. He waits for Ben’s answering smirk to appear.

It doesn’t. A full pout occupies its place, stubbornly refusing to cede ground to any trace of another emotion. When Ben’s lips move, it is not to smile.

“No.”

Hux’s thought process crashes, his mind whirring through empty cycles as he struggles to reboot. He’s planned three steps ahead in every possible iteration of this verbal game of Dejarik, and his opponent won’t touch the board.

Ben shows no notice of Hux’s dismay as he stoops to unclasp the restraints. He moves as if covered by an unseen shroud, his limbs dragging as though this atmosphere is more viscous to him than anyone else breathing it.

“What a shame.” Hux forces a little sarcasm, but his heart isn’t really in it. His eyes flit from Ben’s cold expression to his blaster.

“Mm,” Ben says. “Get up.”

Hux does as he’s told. Ben gestures at an old pilot’s helmet with an opaque blast shield lowered where the wearer’s eyes would be. Disgust twists Hux’s stomach as he grasps the orange Rebel Alliance symbols painted on either side of it.

“Well, this certainly explains why it’s so easy to pick off your pilots.” Hux taps the blast shield. He glances up to see if his barb landed, his gaze scanning every contour of Ben’s face. Not a muscle in it has moved.

“It goes on your head.”

Hux rolls his eyes and complies. The blast shield blocks his vision quite effectively, leaving him only a narrow window of view directly down to his feet.

He’s led down a cool, humid hallway. Hux takes in the surroundings to the best of his ability, tilting his head as subtly as he can to form a mental floor plan from glimpses of the baseboards. He raises his chin a few degrees to follow a hallway branching off to his left.

“Nope.”

A firm grip turns his head to face forward. Hux scowls. He counts the paces until Ben catches his shoulder and turns him to the right.

Air swishes against him as the door slides open. He’s pushed forward. Hux braces himself for a proper interrogation room—maybe the Resistance has at last tracked down a real Intelligence officer. The door slides shut, and the helmet lifts off his head.

Dim yellow light illuminates a standard multi-stall restroom. A row of refreshers sits against the far wall, the folds in the privacy curtains marked with the faint grey ghosts of mildew.

Hux frowns over his shoulder. Ben leans against the closed door, his blaster trained lazily on Hux’s back. Wordless, he supplies Hux with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and folded towel.

Lips pursed, Hux takes them and eyes the refreshers across the room. In truth, they’re no more spartan than Hux’s personal refresher back on the _Finalizer,_ where space is at a premium, but he hasn’t had to clean in a communal space like this since his cadet days. He’d been subject to no small amount of mockery for his insistence on wearing shower shoes, though it hadn’t stopped him then and it doesn’t stop him from missing them now. How his peers would laugh to see him reduced to washing in a Resistance facility, his feet steeped in literal rebel scum.

“We don’t have all night, General.” Ben’s drawl cuts into his thoughts. He hums. “Actually, I guess we do. Go ahead and check the thread count. It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.”

“Well! _Do_ excuse me. Am I keeping you from a previous engagement?” Hux snipes. The sheer audacity of this man, to complain that imprisoning Hux is _his_ inconvenience.

“Just get on with it.” His surly expression indicates that Hux struck true.

“Well,” Hux sneers, pressing his advantage, “whatever it is, you could be back to it easily. There’s a rather simple solution to your problem.”

“Huh,” Ben says, his voice flat. “You’re so right.”

He cocks his blaster and flicks the trigger. Plasma scorches the tiles at Hux’s feet. Hux yelps, clutching the toiletries to his chest as he stumbles backward.

“You’re out of your mind!” Hux shouts. His ears throb with the frantic echo of his pulse. The words are already out before he can reconsider goading the madman with the blaster.

“Are you done?” A brief upward quirk tests the pout on Ben’s lips.

Hux exhales in a huff. He goes through his evening routine as quickly as possible, glancing over his shoulder all the while, but Ben gives no further indications of murderous intent. When Hux has finished with his teeth, a flick of the wrist tucks his toothbrush up his sleeve.

“I’ll shower in the morning.” Hux shoves the bundled towel into Ben’s chest.

Ben raises one eyebrow. He shakes the towel out with one hand and slings it over his shoulder, sending the toothpaste tumbling to the ground. The barrel of his blaster dips downward to indicate that Hux should pick it up. He clenches his jaw and does so, despositing the tube in Ben’s outstretched hand as he straightens up.

“Brush, too.”

Hux’s neck warms under his collar. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t—”

“Do you really think I've never seen a shiv before?”

Hux assesses the man before him, his gaze hardening. Since their last conversation Ben has swept his wild hair back into a half-tail, keeping it off his face, but if anything that only makes him seem more like someone to lounge around in shady cantinas. The olive shade of his simple peasant’s shirt is not dark enough to mask the coppery stains at the ends of his sleeves which might plausibly be either engine grease or blood. Ben’s lazy, undisciplined grip on his blaster broadcasts loud and clear that he does not see Hux as a threat. To be so thoroughly underestimated should please Hux’s tactical mind. Instead, his pride bristles.

“I suppose you have,” Hux answers. “The sharp end, I hope.”

He lets the toothbrush slip out of his sleeve and presses it into Ben’s palm, hard.

“I don’t doubt you’ve made some of your own,” Hux continues quietly. “I wonder what it is you’ve done to get yourself into that kind of trouble. Not First Order custody, I’m sure. Our guards would never be so careless.”

Ben’s eyes darken, suspicion reflected in the infinitesimal contraction of those deep brown irises. Hux locks onto them. It had been a stab in the dark, but he’s certain now that Ben has indeed been held by some force other than the First Order. To find out who and why would be tactically useful. Hux is surprised to find he is also curious.

“Sorry, General. You’re not getting a bedtime story,” Ben says. “Helmet on.”

“Pity,” Hux says. Ben’s bored frown is the last thing he sees before the blast shield consumes his vision.

When Hux is nudged back into his makeshift cell and allowed to remove the helmet once more, he’s surprised to see a bedroll has been laid out on the floor.

“Here.”

Ben’s voice catches his attention a moment before a ration bar hits him in the chest. Hux fumbles to catch it.

“Meals, bathroom breaks, something resembling a bed.” Ben nods down at the bedroll. “Anything else I can do for you, General?”

His inflection on the last word rattles something under Hux’s skin. His title sounds as disrespectful in Ben’s mouth as it did before, but the playful, teasing edge has been replaced with something flat and bitter. Hux itches to ask what Ben has just heard from _his_ general, but he knows better than to ask outright.

“Yes,” he says instead, drawing himself into regulation posture. “It’s customary for prisoners to receive a daily allotment of exercise time. Outdoors, if stationed planetside and weather allows. Though I suppose you would insist on accompanying me and take all the pleasure out of it.”

Ben narrows his eyes. The door rattles shut.

Hux wrinkles his nose. If he can’t bait such a demonstrably temperamental man as Ben into tipping his hand, he really must be losing his touch. He hopes that Ben’s sour mood is the result of good news for the First Order.

More importantly, he’s free of the cuffs.

Hux uses his newfound mobility to examine the seams where the door slots clumsily into its frame. The sliding door has come off its track, which is bent so that the door jams incorrectly outside of its proper latch and housing. Theoretically, it’s no harder to pry open from the inside than the outside, but Hux has heard the sound it makes. He’s not interested in raising such an obvious alarm, least of all without a proper escape plan in place.

The ration bar leaves him unsatisfied. The depth of his hunger doesn’t fully register until he’s scraping the folds of the wrapper, licking the last crumbs from his fingers like a kriffing animal. Hux is struck by the image of pebbles tumbling down into a gaping, bottomless chasm.

He tries to douse his hunger with sleep, but the thin bedroll brings him no more comfort than the ration bar did. He chalks it up to restlessness. When he runs out of ways to arrange his long, narrow frame in these tight quarters, he passes the time by pulling the seams out of Resistance uniforms and fashioning a makeshift garrote. The repetitive motion of weaving threads together soothes the insidious prickling at the back of his mind, until it doesn’t, and then he folds himself into the bedroll and tries to sleep again.

He wakes with the sheets twisted around his legs, shivering and ravenous and grasping at his empty pocket.

 _Shit._ How long since he’s had a cig?

Hux grinds the heel of his hand into his temple. The cigs he so desperately craves are not standard issue from First Order requisitions, despite the packaging where Hux stowed them. They are procured off the books from a discreet supplier, laced with just enough amphetamine to sharpen his focus and keep him optimally functional when his work requires him to forego sleep.

As it has done with increasing frequency for the last few months of the Starkiller project.

He counts three deep, measured breaths and centers himself on the sensation of his chest filling, rising, falling. Hux has been careful. He’s made more than a handful of exceptions to his rationing system of late, but it’s fine. He wants a cig, but he doesn’t need it. He is _not_ an addict.

He funnels his excess energy into finishing the garrote and tucks it into his sleeve where his monomolecular blade should be. Then he waits.

By the time Ben appears, Hux is ready to eat a bantha.

Hux sits up, watching the door with rapt attention. It groans slowly open about a quarter of the way before it catches. He makes particular note of the way Ben shifts his grip on his blaster to grab the door with both hands. A bit of rattling and nudging gets him past the catch, and he slides it the rest of the way one-handed.

“Helmet on. You know the drill.”

Ben’s behavior follows the pattern he set the previous evening: a few terse, moody commands, bull-headed indifference to Hux’s well-crafted remarks, and no effort whatsoever to get information out of him. He doesn’t even make a snarky comment when Hux ensures his full uniform is in place before exiting the refresher, boots and all.

On his return to the cell—Hux has decreed that thinking of it as a _closet_ is bad for morale—another nutrient bar drops into his lap without comment. Hux watches Ben slide the door closed: easy going three quarters of the way, the two-handed grasp to move it past the catch, a slow but steady grind shut. Hux files this information away between dense, grainy mouthfuls of his breakfast bar.

When Ben’s lunchtime nutrient bar delivery comes and goes in the same way, Hux starts to worry.

Afternoon finds him pacing his tiny holding cell, his hands balled into fists to keep them from jittering. Ben’s sudden disinterest in further questioning can no longer be dismissed as a mood swing. These are Resistance orders. Why? Could they have gathered intelligence that makes him redundant? Unlikely. Hux has more critical intelligence in his little finger than the best spy could gather in a year’s time.

He stops cold. Has Snoke left him to the mercy of the Resistance? If the First Order declined a ransom, Resistance leadership might be debating what to do with him.

He runs the numbers in his head, unraveling into the callous arithmetic of cost and benefit. How much will his disappearance set the Order back? He himself has denied plenty of proposals to recover captured and missing personnel, citing cost (if that happens to line up with his professional convenience, all the better). He’s done his best to maximize that cost, to incentivize his safe return, but Snoke is not a creature of logic. He’s a mystic zealot.

Hux catches himself scratching at the growth of stubble dusting his jaw. Fidgeting is unbecoming for a man of his station. So is stubble. Either might be easier to ignore with the searing clarity of smoke on his tongue.

The next time the door opens, Hux snaps.

“I suppose you’re the one responsible for pilfering my cigs.” His voice comes out in a shrill rush like a novice violinist’s first note. Heat creeps up his neck all the way to his ears.

Ben’s eyelids flare a hair’s breadth wider. He meanders across the threshold, unhurried, but the blacks of his eyes come to rest on Hux with a steady focus he hasn’t felt since Ben’s first visit.

“You mean these cigs?”

He pulls a familiar pack from the pocket of his loose leather trousers. Hux’s hand shoots out before he can stop it. One edge of Ben’s mouth tilts up to a narrow point as he withdraws the cigs. Hux sets his weight firmly onto his heels, refusing to go so far as to take a step forward.

A flick of the wrist tips Ben’s blaster to point lazily at the ceiling. He thumbs the pack open, his stubby nail dragging across the split First Order insignia on the flap. He takes a cig into his mouth and rolls it between his lips with practiced ease. Hux’s mouth waters. He’s transfixed, a prey animal frozen in the headlights of Ben’s relentless gaze, not daring to look away until motion in his peripheral vision draws his eyes to the blaster.

Ben rests the barrel below the tip of the cig. He flicks the safety from stun to kill.

Scarlet light gathers at the end of the barrel. Ben’s finger ghosts along the trigger, the mere suggestion of pressure. Hux knows this trick—a quirk in the discharge sequence of particular old blaster models. The needless strain it puts on the cooling circuit is not good for the weapon, but a delicate touch will pool enough excess heat to ignite a flame or release a powerful shot. An indelicate touch will reduce a perfectly good blaster to magma and shrapnel.

Electric heat whispers against Hux’s skin. The glow from the blaster paints Ben’s face in vicious red and black geometry. It sends a little thrill up Hux’s spine. He is art to behold, like this, but there’s something more to it than an aesthetic fascination with this strange and terrible beauty. Something in his bones knows that this man belongs in blood and shadow, something once hidden and misaligned that has just clicked back into place.

The blaster beeps a warning. Heat sink overload. The beeps draw closer and closer in frequency.

Hux doesn’t flinch. Ben doesn’t _blink._

The cig flushes orange with flame. Ben eases off the trigger and his blaster’s warning goes silent as the fierce light fades from the end of the barrel. His mouth slants into a full smirk around the cig. He pulls a long breath through it.

His smirk dissolves into a dry coughing fit. Ben doubles over, hacking up little blue puffs.

Hux can’t help it. He lets loose a mean little chuckle.

“These aren’t just any cigs,” Ben says once he’s recovered his breath. He snaps the pack shut and studies the First Order approved label. “Not standard issue, that’s for sure. Just what have we gotten ourselves into, General?”

Hux straightens under Ben’s scrutiny. “Give it here.”

Ben ignores the command. He takes another drag and manages not to choke this time. The smoke glides out of his nose, dissipating in wisps of ethereal blue and the scent of anise.

“Not spice,” Ben comments. Of course he would recognize the taste of spice—though he lacks the dry, fuschia-limned eyes of an addict. “Hell of a kick, though. Something special. Custom? Or just forbidden? We couldn’t have the rank and file spot their dear general with a special stash, now, could we? Don’t want them getting ideas.”

Ben taps the insigina on the package. Hux’s lips tighten. The rotten scoundrel has hit the mark.

“What’s the matter?” Ben goes on. “Worried they’ll think you’re not fit for duty? Or maybe you don’t want the troopers to get their hands on something so...” He takes another long draw. “Stimulating.”

“Give it to me,” Hux snaps. The liquorice-tart scent fills the room.

A little blue cloud rushes out of Ben’s mouth in the shape of a chuckle. He sucks a slow, contemplative breath and leans forward until they’re less than an arm’s length apart. A stream of smoke flows from Ben’s pursed lips, curls of periwinkle haze beckoning Hux to catch it before it’s gone.

Hux licks his lips and immediately hates himself for it.

He wants almost nothing more than to drink down every last wisp of the smoke, to fill his lungs with this equilibriating toxin, and he almost does. Warmth and anise caress his face. He knows damn well that this is the game, and he is expected to break, and _stars_ is it tempting to throw his dignity to hell and just take what he wants, suck the smoke right out of that smug mouth and see who’s laughing _then_.

There is one thing that Hux wants more, and that is to win.

He steels himself and lets the smoke flutter into nothing all around his face. When he hears the quiet shudder of an inhale, Hux opens his eyes.

“Oh, you meant this.” Ben plucks the cig from his mouth and holds it in the space between them. Hux does not make the mistake of reaching for it again. “How chatty are you feeling tonight, General?”

Hux’s teeth grind. His jaw can clench no further. It’s almost a relief when Ben shrugs and starts back out the door, but enough blue smoke has wafted under Hux’s nose to sharpen his focus to a knife’s edge.

“Wait,” Hux says. Ben stops in the doorway and raises a brow. “Your superiors must have been rather disappointed about those incomplete blueprints.”

The cig droops in Ben’s mouth. He schools his expression back into indifference.

“You going to tell me what happened to the rest of them?” Ben leans against the doorway.

“I’ll consider it. In exchange for a favor.”

“A favor?” Ben’s laughter carries as much incredulity as it does humor. “You’re not exactly in a position to be asking for favors, _sir_.”

“Fine,” Hux huffs. “Yes, _fine_ , if you give me the kriffing cig I will in exchange provide you with classified First Order intelligence that you have _no_ business hearing with those big _stupid_ ears of yours, you insufferable little womp rat, are you satisfied _now_?”

A lopsided grin breaks out across Ben’s face. It stokes white-hot fury in the pit of Hux’s stomach to let this man even _think_ he’s gained the upper hand. But that’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make for the First Order.

“Okay. Let’s hear it.”

Ben steps inside and turns his back to close the door. Hux’s breath stills. Each heartbeat lasts an eon as the door drags closer to the sticking point. Ben’s grip on the blaster loosens. He puts both hands on the door.

Hux lunges.

He slams into Ben’s back, flattening him against the door. Ben coughs frantically as the cig tumbles from his open mouth. Hux pulls his garrote tight across Ben’s throat.

Ben shoves back. His sheer physical power rocks Hux’s grip. Gritting his teeth, Hux puts all of his strength into his stranglehold. Ben’s hand scrabbles at the garrote, his blunt nails clawing against Hux’s hand—he should have thought to have his gloves on.

A plasma bolt scorches the floor beside Hux’s foot. Ben’s blaster swings back in his right hand, wild and unpredictable. Another blast flies wide. Hux throws his weight to the side, slamming Ben’s blaster arm into the door with his hip. Ben grunts. The blaster hits the floor.

Ben knocks Hux off-balance and spins free from the door, yanking Hux forward by the arms. Hux’s muscles strain to their breaking point. He throws himself backward so his full weight falls on the thread at Ben’s throat, but the impossible man is still on his feet somehow. Ben’s thick arms shudder, his hands digging painfully into Hux’s forearms as he fights to lift him. Hux hangs there and waits for the last of the fight to gasp its way out of Ben’s body.

A massive blow knocks Hux’s breath out of him. He flies back and slams into the shelf. Hux blinks down at the ripped halves of the garrote his hands. His lungs throb uselessly in his chest as a tight, invisible grip seals around his throat.

Hux sputters. His eyes fly wide, darting around to find his unseen assailant.

Ben is on his feet. One hand clutches his neck where Hux’s garrote had been moments before. He holds the other raised towards Hux in the shape of a vise grip.

Hux claws at the suffocating weight, but his hands close on nothing but his own neck. He stares at the empty space between himself and Ben’s threatening reach, his oxygen-starved brain trying and failing to explain this lethal impossibility as his gaze crawls up to Ben’s dark, red-rimmed eyes.

The world drops out from under him.

Hux reels. A full-body sense of vertigo washes over him. The supply closet falls out of existence, replaced by a vast chamber with black durasteel floors polished to the sheen of a dark mirror. Like Hux, this room would feel at home on a Star Destroyer. But his presence here feels out of focus, like he is at once both here and not. Like home, but sideways.

Tattered scarlet drapery litters the ground, smoke rising from the wrinkled piles. At the edge of his vision Hux spies an imposing throne raised on a dais, its occupant cut into neat, brutal halves at the waist. He tries to turn but can’t move. The crushing pressure at his throat holds him in place. But he doesn’t need to look closer—there’s no mistaking the mangled face of Supreme Leader Snoke. Unmistakable, too, is the man staring him down across the room.

Ben glares at him with the same eyes, though there is darkness and fire in them that Hux hasn’t seen there before, not even in the heat of their battle. The waves of dark hair, the stark lines of his nose and downturned brows, the full-lipped mouth: each feature looks the same in isolation, but together they twist into a ferocious snarl that looks as out of place as the scar that runs across his cheek. His hand twitches in black leather, the faintest suggestion of a pinch on the other side of the room. Hux’s throat constricts.

And in the space of a breath—a sweet, glorious breath—all of it is gone. The throne, the smoldering chamber, the invisible claw at his windpipe.

Hux is on his knees, panting. He’s faintly aware of the claustrophobic quarters and dim light of the Resistance supply closet. Everything around him is a haze, his muddled neural signals too disorganized to qualify as thought.

“Ren, no,” a weak voice murmurs. Hux realizes belatedly that it was his lips, his breath that formed those words.

“You—”

The answering voice hits him like an AT-AT. He was too preoccupied gulping down precious air to look for his enemy. Hux raises his head, breath shaky, and braces himself.

Ben stares down at him, back pressed against the door and transformed utterly. The dark robes and scarred, glowering countenance are gone. He’s back in his threadbare tunic and loose leather pants. His eyes… the same in form but not in feeling, two black holes blown wide and glossy. The conviction, the rage, the cruelty have all gone out of them. The look that’s replaced them is one Hux has never seen on Ben’s face, one that some unvoiced whisper tells him does not belong there.

Fear.

“No.” Ben’s body shrinks into the door.

Hux looks up in bewilderment. Ben is gaping like _Hux_ was the one who flung _him_ across the room and crushed his throat without laying a finger on him. Hux puts a shaky hand against his neck. Ben looks from Hux down to his own hands. They’re shaking, too.

“No,” he whispers again, “no.”

Ben gives Hux one last horrified glance and flees without another word. He barely remembers to grab his blaster before the door rattles shut.

Hux pulls himself over to his bed roll and watches a ribbon of smoke rise from the crushed cig on the floor. Fragments of neural impulse slowly coalesce into thoughts, thoughts that harden into ice in his chest. Hux had wanted information. He just hadn’t wanted that information to be that the Resistance was harboring a dangerous Force user.

His head drops back against the wall.

“Kriff.”


End file.
